Broken to Bridle
by lionesseyes13
Summary: A series of scenes spanning Owen's squireship to Lord Wyldon.
1. Chapter 1

Author's Note: This is my first attempt at a Tamora Pierce fanfiction, so I would appreciate any feedback I receive from readers, because I'd like to gauge whether I ought to continue with this or not. I just loved Wyldon and Owen so much in _Lady Knight_ that I had to delve into their relationship a little.

Disclaimer: No, my name is not Tamora Pierce, and, therefore, I own nothing. If I were her, I wouldn't be posting on a fanfiction website, would I?

Review: Review and you'll magically be sent to Tortall.

A Squire at Last

When Owen of Jesslaw entered Lord Wyldon of Cavall's office, the change in it swept over him immediately, and, initially, he supposed that he had strode into the wrong room by mistake, despite the number of times he had come over the past four years. On a whole, his bemusement could perhaps be forgiven, since the study was practically in disarray, and Lord Wyldon was renowned for keeping his possessions meticulously. However, when Owen spotted the training master piling tomes into a trunk, he realized that he had, indeed, wandered into the correct chamber, after all.

"What happened?" he stuttered, gawking at his environs. "Did a hurricane strike, my lord?" That seemed to be the only logical reason for the anomaly that was the condition of Wyldon's quarters.

"Is that any manner to enter a room in, Jesslaw?" Tilting his scarred face away from the luggage he was packing, Lord Wyldon glowered at the adolescent. "Here I was thinking that Master Oakbridge had managed to hammer a modicum of etiquette into your head."

"I beg your pardon," mumbled Owen, bowing and praying to any of the listening deities that this movement would conceal the eyeroll he had been unable to suppress. More audibly, he added, "Sir Myles said you wished to see me."

That was why he was here in the first place, although why the training master desired to meet with him was as unfathomable to him as advanced mathematics was. As a general rule, when Lord Wyldon wanted to have a word with a page or squire, it was not an auspicious omen. Yet, Owen was at a loss to comprehend what transgression he had committed on this occasion. Mithros, he hadn't even been embroiled in any conflicts with anyone who would question Kel's virtue in at least a month. It seemed that those who would have disparaged her had finally determined that it wasn't worth a fist up every orifice to do so, which demonstrated that it was actually possible, although difficult and time consuming, to teach an old dog a new trick.

"So I did." With a grunt, Lord Wyldon shoved himself off the floor and settled himself in the oaken chair behind his now empty desk. Once he had seated himself, he gestured at the uncushioned, uncompromising chair opposite him. "Please be seated."

Even though it was discomfiting to do so in the training master's presence, Owen complied out of a habit of obedience to the other's commands and because the "please" was superfluous. The imperious tone in which the sentence was uttered rendered it an order, not a request, and even he wasn't lunatic enough to defy Lord Wyldon over such a trivial issue.

"Now, attend to me closely," stipulated Lord Wyldon, "for I'm about to tell you something crucial, and I don't want the entire palace to know by this time tomorrow. Am I clear?"

At this juncture, Neal might have quipped that the man did appear rather off-color― transparent, in fact― now that he mentioned it, but Owen wasn't quite as obnoxious as his acerbic friend, so he only vowed exuberantly, "My lord, I promise that I'll tell no one what you say to me."

"Don't make pledges that you can't fulfill, Jesslaw. I am aware of the fact that you can no more clamp your mouth shut than thunder can resist following lightning," Lord Wyldon advised him, his jaw twisting in a fashion that, on a less austere individual, might have indicated a wry amusement. Before Owen could assemble the wits required to devise a rational reply to this accurate assessment of his secret-keeping skills, the older gentleman resumed expressionally, "I've decided to resign from my post as training master."

"You're quitting?" Owen gasped, his mouth agape. No, that was impossible. The world would end before the training master gave up. He was too resolute and valiant to surrender. "You, of all people, are giving up?"

"Don't be so dramatic, Jesslaw," snapped Lord Wyldon. "I'm not quitting―I'm resigning, or handing my position over to someone who I believe will do a better job than I will. There's a considerable distinction between the two, and it would be beneficial if you learned it."

At this point, Owen could concoct no comment that would lower the tension in the chamber, and silence permeated it for one of the most stifled minutes of his whole rather unspectacular existence, and then Lord Wyldon announced baldly, "If I'm no longer training master, then I'll be eligible to command in the war against Scanra in the spring, which, of course, means that I could use a squire."

"Are you asking me to be your squire, my lord?" Owen couldn't prevent the dubiousness from intruding upon his voice, since he was about as certain that he had either misheard or misconstrued the older man's pronouncement as he was that Carthak was south of Tortall. He was also suspecting that this was an odd dream and that, if he pinched himself forcefully enough, he would be dragged back to reality with a jolt. "Me?"

"Yes, I'm asking you," the other confirmed, his manner clipped.

"But I'm not the best at anything!" Owen protested, gray eyes agog. When he pinched himself, he discovered, to his alarm, that he remained right where he was. Apparently, this wasn't a dream. It was really transpiring.

"No, you're not, but you're not the worst, either, and, with honing, you wouldn't make a terrible warrior," explained Lord Wyldon, his brown eyes as immovable as a glacier, as usual. "I happen to believe that I can provide that polishing. Besides, as I've recently been reminded, being a knight is about much more than being an excellent fighter― it is about abiding by the Code of Chivalry. While battle arts can be taught, morality can't, or―" Here, he broke off for a second, his gaze haunted, and then forged onward in his latest campaign― "if it can, I am not capable of offering that instruction, as the cases of Joren and Vison attest. However, you have honor and the rest can be taught if you're willing to learn."

"So I get to be the squire of a fighting knight, after all?" Owen's eyes sparkled with jubilance as his pulse rose, deluging his body with adrenaline.

"You can be if you so desire, yes." Lord Wyldon bobbed his head in somber affirmation. "Still, I would urge you to consider my proposal carefully. You know what an unrelenting taskmaster I am from experience. Well, if you're my squire, it'll be noticeably worse. I'll work you like a horse. You'll learn to tilt, to breed dogs, and more than you ever wanted to know about the art of making war. In short, if you're looking for a less strenuous squireship, remain under Sir Myles' guidance until another knight asks you to be his squire."

"No, I'll be your squire, my lord," Owen burst out, almost bouncing up and down in his wooden chair. He would be able to do some real fighting before his Ordeal, and he would be able to spend a majority of his remaining time as a squire away from the court, two things he was beginning to surmise would never occur as month after disconsolating month crept by and no knight offered him a post as squire.

Yes, Lord Wyldon behaved like a bear with a headache six out of the seven days in a week, but he was a beast Owen was familiar with, and he had declared that he would work him like a horse― but any knight worth his salt knew exactly how far he could push his mount and cared for it well so that it would return the service in warfare, and, as far as Owen could judge, Lord Wyldon devoted himself to being the ideal knight. Sure, he didn't always succeed, but you had to admire or at least respect someone who tried when most people didn't.

Besides, he had learned so much as a page under Wyldon, so, no doubt he would master much more as his squire. That's right. He would perfect his battle techniques in the skirmishes against the savage Scanrans from the north, and then, when he was knighted, he would utilize his talents to annihilate the bandits in Tortall…the time those scum had to inhabit the realm was limited, and they would all rue the day a contingency of vagabonds had murdered Owen of Jesslaw's mother.

Right now, though, he was quivering with eagerness to confide in Kel. Of all his buddies, she would be capable of relating to the exhilaration flowing through his veins and arteries at the present, because she, too, had feared that she would not be selected, either, as she was "The Girl." Yet, she had been taken as squire by Lord Raoul, who seemed cheery enough when he wasn't pretending to be a cliff at banquets and who doubtlessly had taught her all sorts of jolly things like jousting. Yes, as soon as he was dismissed, he was going to see her, so he could babble on about how lucky he was so someone who was actually interested.

"Go pack. We leave for Cavall tomorrow. I'll get you a permanent mount then." Lord Wyldon waved a hand for him to depart, and with a hasty, perfunctory bow Owen raced out of the study to visit Kel in her quarters and impart his marvelous news upon her.


	2. Chapter 2

Author's Note: As far as the duke as opposed to an earl address, I just looked it up online at .com/node/48. I don't know how accurate the information really is, but it was the best I could find. If you know better, just correct me. I am an American, and we don't have a nobility, obviously. (We just have the Kennedys and the Bushes, but they are an aristocracy, not a nobility.)

A Long Ride

The next morning, they set off for Cavall far too early for Owen's endorsement. In fact, as they left the Royal Palace and Corus in their wake, he couldn't help but debating internally whether it could actually be constituted as the day, not the night, at all. After all, the sun hadn't even risen yet, and the sky was still painted a dull plumy hue. Indeed, it was only when they rode into the forest that sprang up on the outskirts of Corus that the golden, pink, scarlet, and cerulean auroras that heralded daybreak lined the horizon.

Through his lethargy, Owen was obliged to concede that the sight was rather attractive, although it was hardly worth the steep price of awakening at this ludicrously early hour to behold. His mind was lugged away from such drowsy ruminations when Lord Wyldon spoke for the first time since they had departed the Royal Palace through the gilded main gates.

"What, Jesslaw, do you suppose knights do on journeys such as this?" he inquired, arching an eyebrow in his squire's direction.

'Sleep with their eyes open' surged to the tip of his tongue, but, with an extraordinary exercise of self-discipline he was positive he would never be able to duplicate even if he lived to be one thousand years old, he managed to keep the notion in his brain, where it belonged. Instead, he replied hesitantly, "Um, look out for brigands?" It would be horribly humiliating if the knights who were intended to protect everyone got robbed by the thugs they were supposed to defend people from, after all.

Still, why would any thieves wish to be up at this ungodly hour, especially considering that he and Wyldon were probably the only beings in Tortall on the lanes so cursed early? Despite this implausibility, he still reckoned that he had provided the correct response. Wyldon was a war veteran, and they were always paranoid about maintaining their guard, as they truly were convinced that the entire world was out to murder them in the most gruesome fashions imaginable.

Obviously, though, Wyldon had a different perspective for he grunted, "Why must adolescents invariably answer a question with another one? When I pose an inquiry, I want information, not questions. So, are you suggesting that we should look out for brigands, or are you wondering if we should do so?"

"Suggesting, I guess, my lord," faltered Owen.

"Better, although you don't really need the 'I guess' because I can figure out that you're the one doing the thinking if the words are coming out of your mouth. Anyway, that was a very safe response, even if it was technically a correct one, which I suppose I should be glad of." Lord Wyldon's lips pursed as he offered this critique. "Any other ideas?"

"No, sir," Owen confessed, shaking his head in negation. Admittedly, he hadn't invested much effort in the endeavor of concocting another proposal, since if all his new knight-master was going to do was criticize everything he voiced, he might as well remain as quiet as he possibly could. Anyway, he had just gotten up, so his mind wasn't functioning― it would commence doing so at approximately noon. At that time, the man could return with his badgering inquiries. Then, he might actually have a decent answer.

"Well, if a knight happened to possess a squire, he might wisely elect to take advantage of the opportunity to review old lessons the squire should already know, but probably doesn't," stated Lord Wyldon, and Owen had the nasty, innard-twisting suspicion that this generality was going to be applied to them, and he wasn't in the mood for quizzing, as if anyone ever was, but now was way too early for thinking. "Why don't you refresh my memory on how one formally would address a duke as opposed to an earl?"

"Mithros, I didn't know that I'd agreed to be Oakbridge's squire," Owen grumbled, scowling down at his saddle horn. He hated etiquette. As far as he was concerned, it should take a long walk off a short pier. Of course, he wouldn't have minded if Oakbridge had slit his wrists to lower his high blood pressure, either.

It transpired that this was quite the wrong remark to make, for Lord Wyldon returned the glower, and, in his case, this was a noticeably more impressive move, since he had been perfecting this expression for at least two decades. "Don't speak to me like that, Jesslaw," he snapped. "I'm your knight-master, and you'll treat me with the respect I deserve. You'll also address _Master_ Oakbridge by his title. Now, answer my question."

"I've forgotten what it was, sir." He was stalling. Remembering who liked the "the" in their title, and who preferred it omitted was worse than recalling equations for mathematics. At least he could see some sort of purpose for the arithmetic. Fretting over prepositions in titles just seemed like a waste of time to him.

"Tell me how to formally introduce an earl, and then tell me how to formally introduce a duke," sighed Wyldon. "Assume for purposes of this exercise both their names are Cadoc of the House of the nonexistent Talinth, and are either the earl or the duke of Winterborough, which also does not exist."

"For an earl, it would be 'Lord Cadoc Talinth, Earl of Winterborough', and, for a duke, it would be 'His Grace Cadoc Talinth, Duke of Winterborough,'" Owen hedged, frowning as he labored to recollect these profuse salutations.

"Earls have 'the' before their title," his knight-master corrected him, and Owen nodded his comprehension, although he suspected that he would forget this fine distinction by this time tomorrow, if not sooner. "Now, if they both were accompanied by their wives, Lissa of the same House and fief, how would you introduce these ladies?"

The morning continued in this manner until noon, when they halted for lunch, and, to Owen's relief, the man had to stop testing him on titles long enough to consume the dried meat, bread, and cheese they had gotten from the kitchens at the Royal Palace before they departed. As he piled food into his mouth, exhausted after the incessant demands, Owen contemplated morosely how long he would have to endure this ceaseless inquisition. This reflection was what prompted him to ask between chomps of dried roast beef, "How long is it to Cavall, my lord?"

"A day and a half more," Lord Wyldon informed him. "It's not far from the border with Tusaine, which you would know if you looked at a map of Tortall every once in a while."

"I do glance at maps of the country, sir," protested Owen, stung. "I just get confused with the keys, and where the ten and twenty mile marks are on my thumb when I measure stuff on the map."

"Well, there we have this afternoon's lesson, then," concluded Lord Wyldon, and his squire sighed. This was definitely going to be a long and tiring trip. Why had he agreed to be Lord Wyldon's squire again?

Oh, yes, because nobody else would accept him, and he had to do something, or else he would go insane. That was what he had thought before he had taken up Wyldon's offer. Now he was starting to believe that endless working with precious reward was going to cause him to become a lunatic long before having nothing to do would. Still, there was nothing he could do about it now. He had promised to serve Lord Wyldon, and so he was stuck in this unenviable position until he was knighted, a prospect that had never appeared so distal in his mind's eye before.

"What's Cavall like, sir?" Owen posed the question mainly out of a desire to shove down his depression. However, it seemed like he had finally stumbled on the right inquiry, because suddenly Lord Wyldon's harshly chiseled features softened, and his dark gaze lost most of its impenetrable, calculating cast as he stared up at the steely winter sky above them, envisioning his home.

"As far as terrain is concerned, it is much like Tusaine with dales and small hills," Lord Wyldon educated him in a milder tone than usual. "In the winter, when all the trees and plants are barren, it's nothing spectacular, but during the spring, it is amazing when all the grass and flowers start sprouting up again. During the summer, the weather is never too hot, and the meadows are coated with wildflowers. I like it best in autumn, though, when every leaf has a different color, and the air is crisp and invigorating. It is very pleasant for the lungs when one is running."

Reflecting on his knight-master's morning jogs across the Royal Palace ramparts every day at dawn, Owen smiled, as Lord Wyldon regained his typical brusque nature, as he finished, "Unfortunately, you probably will only ever see it in winter, for the rest of the time we will be off fighting the Scanrans or whoever wants to sneak across the border at any given time, so my wife won't accuse me of being a useless old man, and leave me for some young, spry whippersnapper."

"Oh," was all Owen could supply in response to this assertion. After all, he didn't wish to be privy to any of the man's marital problems. In fact, he had never examined the possibility that Lord Wyldon would be married, have children, or live any existence beyond as a warrior and a training master.

A moment after the notion occurred to him, he almost bashed himself on the forehead, vexed with his own folly. Of course Wyldon would be wedded. Almost all noblemen were, and a conservative like his knight-master would have settled down to reproduce long ago. He would perceive it as his duty, and Lord Wyldon of Cavall always fulfilled his responsibilities. That was one thing you could grant him, even if you would allow him nothing else, and many of the more liberal inhabitants of the realm wouldn't.

Still, picturing Wyldon with a wife and offspring clustered around him was an interesting mental portrait. Maybe this journey wouldn't be so terrible if he received more revelations like that, and his squireship could be very exciting if there were more secrets to be uncovered about his knight-master, and, glancing at the man's blank face, he surmised there were.


	3. Chapter 3

Author's Note: I am sorry if this chapter is kind of slow, but next chapter should be a bit more exciting. Anyway, please feel free to let me know what you think. Reviewers will earn Irish Soda Bread in honor of St. Patty's Day.

Welcome to Cavall

As Lord Wyldon had asserted, they arrived in Cavall after a day and a half more riding. However, what he had failed to mention was that it was an hour more on horseback until they reached the castle from the fief's borders. Thus, by the time that the ramparts of the manor came into view at last, Owen was fatigued and couldn't wait to get off his accursed mount. Of course, he wouldn't mind washing himself either, for he was sweaty and smelled like a horse.

When they had handed their steeds to the hostlers in Lord Wyldon's stables, they strode up the slippery with slick mind-winter ice stone pathway to the entrance hall of the castle, moving as quickly as they could in order to block out the cold as much as possible. Upon walking into the spacious chamber, Owen barely had time to appreciate the quality of the sparkling marble floor or the pastels painted on the vaulted ceiling, because his attention was captured almost immediately by the sound of several pairs of feet clattering down the stairwell from the upper levels into the entrance hall. The next second, he retreated reflexively as his knight-master found himself accosted by a legion of shouting females, whose voices combined to form an incomprehensible cacophony in the room.

At first, he debated whether to assist the man. However, he rapidly decided against it. Girls were terrifying. They were always giggling at the most revolting males or shrieking at unintimidating things like spiders. Therefore, Owen was much more inhibited by them than he was by bandits or enemy soldiers. He could deal with them, since he comprehended them, but the female gender was still unfathomable to him. As such, Wyldon would just have to survive this battle on his own.

Apparently, Lord Wyldon, after his years of experience in the military, was not afraid by this ambush. In fact, he was patting the four young ladies who had dashed up to him on the head and taking it in turns to hug them. It was then that it dawned upon Owen that the girls had been intended as something of a welcome committee. That is, they were greeting Lord Wyldon affectionately, and he was returning their regard just as warmly.

The Stump had emotions, after all. Owen's mouth gaped open as if he were attempting to catch flies, as he reflected that the end of the world must be approaching. No doubt he would learn next that Wyldon and Lady Alanna were actually the best of buddies, and they only pretended to detest each other so that they could laugh secretly at everyone else's reactions to their enmity. Well, he might be able to accept that once he got his mind around the concept of Wyldon ever displaying any obvious sign of amusement that would be recognizable to other mortals.

After a moment or two of jostling, the congregation by the doorway began to break up into single human figures again. As the huddle divided, a fifth woman, dressed in an emerald gown cut in the old style with her graying hair tied up in a severe bun, descended the steps with far more poise than any of the preceding females had demonstrated.

"Husband, how nice to see you again," she trilled, gliding over to Lord Wyldon and brushing her lips against his clean-shaven cheeks. When he heard her voice, Owen blinked in surprise. Somehow, it was astonishing to hear such an austerely attired woman address anyone with such a lilting tone.

"The pleasure is all mine, I assure you, Vivienne," replied Lord Wyldon, as he returned the kiss.

"Tell me, are you planning on introducing me to your young companion, or am I going to be compelled to engage in a guessing game with him until I stumble upon the proper name?" inquired Lady Vivienne, who was, it seemed, Wyldon's spouse. As she posed this question, she gestured at Owen with a wave of her hand.

As everyone who was assembled in the entrance hall abruptly shifted their focus to him, Owen edged away from the maple door he had backed up against. Truthfully, he probably would have fled earlier, but the frigid temperature outside had forced him to remain among the others. After all, escaping them was not worth freezing to death and being immortalized forever as a statue on Lord Wyldon's front yard.

"Lady Vivienne, may I present my new squire, Owen of Jesslaw?" Wyldon bowed to his wife. Then, he pivoted to regard the four younger women present. "Lady Amara, Lady Henrietta, Lady Karina, and Lady Margary, this is my new squire, Owen of Jesslaw." His eyes found Owen now. "Jesslaw, this is my wife, the Lady Vivienne of Cavall, my daughters, the Lady Karina and the Lady Margary, and my nieces, the Lady Amara and the Lady Henrietta."

After everybody had performed the obligatory bows and curtsies that etiquette required following such introductions, Vivienne observed tartly, "Why, Wyldon, it is astounding that you've taken a squire."

"I wrote to you to inform you that he was accompanying me," he frowned.

"You know none of the letters get through at this time of year," countered Vivienne.

"The roads are dreadful, but I don't see how my first note got through to you, but my second didn't," mumbled Lord Wyldon. "That makes no sense."

For a moment, Lady Vivienne maintained her somber expression and then she laughed. "Oh, Wyldon, I was joking. Your letter got through just fine."

"So, after months of being constantly mocked by insolent pages, I come home at last, and all my family does is taunt me?" Lord Wyldon grumbled, but he didn't sound quite as stiff as normal. In fact, if another chunk toppled off his typical demeanor, Owen would have to perceive him as a family man, rather than an iceberg that, through some mage's hoax, had sprouted legs and so was capable of roaming the nation.

"Come, let's go into the parlor," urged Lady Vivienne, grabbing her husband's arm and directing him toward the stairwell, "and don't be so morose, dear. It hardly suits a homecoming, and I can't stand it when you're so grim."

As Lord Wyldon, clutching his wife's arm, climbed the steps with the four girls in tow, Owen remained stationary, contemplating if courtesy demanded that he join them in the sitting room, or if he was permitted to depart from the merry reunion that he felt like the fifth wheel on a wagon in. Fortunately, his inner turmoil was ceased when Lady Vivienne whirled around to face him when she was halfway upstairs and added, "Squire Owen, if you'd like to wash the dirt of your travel off you, I'll summon a servant to show you to the chamber I had prepared for your use."

"Yes, please, my lady," Owen answered readily. Even if he hadn't been ruminating wistfully upon the myriad benefits of a pitcher of water on his current cleanliness, he would have acceded instantly to her offer. After all, it was an excuse to evade the proceedings, and such an opportunity should not be squandered. He would even commence scrubbing behind his ears if it allowed him to avoid feeling awkward and unnecessary.

Nodding her comprehension, Vivienne clapped her hands, a sound that resounded like thunder in the hall, and called, "Lachlan!"

Within a moment, a manservant decked out in the Cavall livery had materialized from, as far as Owen could discern, beneath the flagstones or between the seams in the walls. "My lady?" the servant bowed upon his arrival.

"Lachlan, kindly escort Squire Owen to the quarters I've readied for him," she commanded.

"Very well, my lady." The servant offered another obeisance. Then, as Lord Wyldon, Lady Vivienne, and their maidenly entourage continued their voyage up the stairwell, Lachlan led Owen out of the hall and up a different flight of steps. As he left, Owen heard his knight-master hollering a reminder at him to be punctual for supper.

The set of stairs Lachlan and Owen climbed came out in the less decorative portion of the manor, where the Cavall family resided. Plainly, this segment of the castle was intended to be comfortable and not supposed to impress visitors as much as the outer chambers, which had been designed to illustrate the wealth of the family. Without providing any commentary, because, apparently, those employed by the Cavalls were instructed to be silent and efficient in executing their tasks, Lachlan directed Owen down that corridor, twisted around a corner, and then halted halfway down another.

"Is there anything else I may do for you?" Lachlan wanted to know, as he opened the door for Owen.

"Well, now that you mention it, I'd like to know when dinner is served here." That would be a useful scrap of data if he were expected to arrive for the meal on time. It was hard to be punctual when you weren't apprised of when exactly an event was scheduled to occur.

"At the sixth bell in the evening sharp," Lachlan informed him. "It never changes. Nothing ever changes in Cavall."

Well, that was not a heart stopper, since Lord Wyldon wasn't renowned for championing change of any sort. In fact, he was famous for advocating just the opposite.

"Thank you," he told Lachlan.

"My pleasure." Lachlan gave another bow, causing Owen to experience a twinge of sympathy for the man. It seemed like all this servant ever did was bend down before others. Well, maybe if he was lucky, he would be promoted to steward, and then all the help in Cavall would have to bow before him, Owen thought as Lachlan strode off down the passageway, his footsteps fading.

Then, Lachlan was erased from his mind, as he entered his bedchamber and discovered that there was a roaring fire in the grate and that his baggage had already been carried up from the stables. There was also a jug of water on the nightstand alongside a towel, waiting for him. When he approached it, he found that the liquid was not frozen and was still emitting tiny gusts of steam. Obviously, Lady Vivienne had arranged all this to be done within moments of his arrival and then had managed to be present in the entrance hall before her daughters and nieces had completed greeting her husband.

Clearly, Vivienne was a mage, he reasoned as he rubbed his face with the towel that he had been furnished with, since she would not have been able to organize this so impeccably or have read his thoughts so perfectly earlier. Either that, or it was just some crazy female trick that was hammered into a lady's head when they were shipped off to the convent for eight years to learn how to be noblewomen the way boys were shunted off to train as knights at the Royal Palace.

Yes, he concluded, females were all lunatics. That's why it was a good thing that Kel never acted like a girl, because that would have just disconcerted him, and he didn't want to be made uneasy. Anxiety caused one to become like the Stump, and that was not something Owen desired to happen to him. No, he would retain his youthful charm forever, even when he dashed around the country on horseback, defeating bandits at every turn.


	4. Chapter 4

Making New Friends

Supper was a rather disconcerting event for Owen because he was familiar with nobody at the table with the exception of Lord Wyldon, whose presence could hardly be constituted as reassuring. When it concluded at last, as Owen was leaving the dining hall, his knight-master grasped his shoulder to halt his progress.

"Go fetch a cloak from your room and meet me in the stables five minutes from now," ordered Lord Wyldon, as his squire pivoted to regard him.

"Yes, sir." Somehow, Owen had the wit to bow before he raced out of the banquet hall on his latest errand. Although in his rush, his bow probably did not even approach the proper degree of descent, he was rescued by the fact that Lord Wyldon had already spun away from him and started his journey outside, clearly confident that the young man would have the prudence to abide by his command.

Why did Wyldon wish to see him in the stables? Owen wondered as he hurried upstairs to where he seemed to recall his chambers were located. Did he want to provide him with his new mount already?

Oh, how he hoped that this would be the case. After all, he was tired of his old horse, and a new one― one a real knight would utilize― would be a welcome change. Actually, receiving a fine steed might indeed be worth becoming Lord Wyldon's squire for. However, he was not willing to swear to the final notion in a court of law, since he had not experienced much with his new knight-master yet. No doubt, for better or for worse, that would be altered in the not so distant future.

When he finally arrived at his rooms after climbing two incorrect stairwells and bustling down three wrong corridors, he was running behind the time, and he knew that as surely as he did that Corus was the capital of Tortall. Therefore, he yanked his cloak out of his baggage hastily, indifferent to the fact that this action spilled his belongings all over the floor like marbles. As he bolted out of the door, he fastened his cloak about his neck.

After only going down one incorrect staircase and darting down two wrong hallways, Owen finally reached the entrance hall. Without breaking his stride, although he recognized vaguely in a rear portion of his brain that his speed greatly increased the odds of him skidding over the ice and spraining an ankle, he charged out of the castle and onto the grounds.

As he jogged toward the stables, Owen concluded that Wyldon had desired for him to run like this, because he was always babbling on about its value in developing muscles and endurance. He had handed Owen a ridiculous deadline to rendezvous with him in the stables considering Owen had never set foot in the manor before, so that Owen, well aware of his knight-master's stance on tardiness, would have to run if he wished to dodge a lecture on punctuality.

At last, just when Owen's legs were insisting fervently that they would propel him no further and his lungs were declaring passionately that they could furnish him with no more oxygen, the stables came into view. Relief coursed through his arteries. This spurred him the last few feet. In fact, he was able to increase his speed as he neared the stables by drawing on an untapped reservoir he had buried deep within him that he had never before known had dwelt inside him.

"You enjoy cutting things rather close, don't you, Jesslaw?" observed Lord Wyldon, his tone as frigid as the weather. As he established as much, he arched an eyebrow at his panting, crimson-cheeked squire, who had just bounded through the door with all the ceremony of an irate bull.

This did not appear to require a response, and, since Owen was still struggling to breathe at a reasonably normal pace, he declined to remark on this statement.

"Well, now that you've finished rendering your breath-taking entrance, I'd like to show you something," Wyldon continued when his squire made no reply. Then, he gestured at a stall to his left. "Come in here with me."

Owen complied, and, when he stepped into the stall, he found himself staring at the brawny foreleg of a gigantic, liver-colored stallion. At this sight, his exhale snagged in his throat and was transfigured into a gasp. Here was an animal that could punt him into next month without exerting itself, and one glance in its intelligent chestnut eyes was enough to inform Owen that it was a clever creature.

Of course it would be, though, if Lord Wyldon had bred it, since he was renowned for his skill at raising dogs and horses. There were even rumors circulating the realm that anything he touched turned out perfectly. If he hadn't been acquainted with Joren and Vinson, Owen might have been inclined to perceive this as true.

"Well, what do you think?" Lord Wyldon tilted his head at the steed, which, after swishing its tail and nickering a salutation at Wyldon, had returned to munching on the grain in its food bucket.

"It's big," stuttered Owen, supplying the first adjective that sprang to his numb lips. It was factual, too, for the horse could have squashed him as easily as he could an ant. Fortunately, the mount didn't look in the mood to do so at the moment, thank Mithros for his small blessings such as that.

"_He_, Jesslaw, he," his knight-master corrected, "and do you have any other insightful comments for me, such as oceans are wet?"

"Deserts are dry, my lord," answered Owen automatically. Then, as the impact of his own words struck him, he could have smacked himself. Mithros, he had definitely been friends with Neal too long. Any scant control he had once possessed over his errant tongue he was losing, and it was entirely Neal's fault, and now Lord Wyldon was going to murder him. If fortune deigned to favor Owen for once, he'd do it quickly.

Luckily, to Owen's astonishment, Lord Wyldon wasn't as nettled as Owen had envisioned he would be. Indeed, he only pronounced wryly, "Brilliant as usual. Do you have anything else you'd like to say about the horse?"

"No, my lord." Owen shook his head in negation. The stallion was still so impressive to him that he couldn't manage to discuss it at any greater length.

"Very well. Then I shall say that this steed is about the right size for you, and he is one of the best I've ever trained. If you want him, you may have him."

"I'll have him, thank you," Owen muttered absently, tentatively holding his palm out for the horse to sniff.

"He's named Windtreader," Lord Wyldon educated him as Windtreader's nostrils absorbed Owen's scent, and Owen tensed, waiting on tenterhooks to discover whether the animal cared for him or not. This question was answered beyond all possible dispute when Windtreader commenced licking his fingers with a long, scratchy, and pink tongue.

"Here. Offer him this," commanded Lord Wyldon, shoving a ripe red apple into his squire's free hand. Battling not to laugh at the peculiar sensation of the mount's tongue on his hand, Owen pulled his palm away from the horse, and obediently accepted proffered the fruit. Immediately, Windtreader's head shot forward like a rock lurching out of a catapult, and he snatched the apple, which he swallowed in one colossal gulp.

"Come along." Wyldon turned around and exited the stall, tossing over his shoulder, "There's something else I want to show you."

Upon receiving this instruction, Owen patted Windtreader on the head, rubbing the slobber back onto the animal, even though he knew that he would be the one cleaning it off tomorrow when he scrubbed down his mount, and then he followed his knight-master out of the stables.

"Here's an apple for you, too." Wyldon threw the fruit in Owen's direction while they strode out of the stables and down the ice-encrusted pathway toward the structure Owen presumed was the kennels. As he caught it and began to chew on it, his knight-master withdrew another apple from his pocket and began to eat it. "Apples are good to eat. They prevent people from getting scurvy."

"My lord, can I rename Windtreader?" burst out Owen, asking the question that had been burning inside of him ever since they had departed the stables.

"'May I,' not 'can I', Jesslaw. 'May I' is what you use when you're requesting permission, and 'can I' is what you use when you're asking if you have the capability to do something," explained Lord Wyldon crisply. "Anyway, if you're willing to teach Windtreader to respond to a new name, you may utilize it, assuming it is an appropriate name, of course."

"Don't worry, sir, it's appropriate," Owen reassured him. "I'm going to call him Happy."

"Happy." Shaking his head, Wyldon mumbled, "Well, I suppose it could be worse. After all, you could've named him Jolly."

"I do know other positive adjectives," protested Owen, as they entered the kennels, and all the dogs in their iron cages commenced yelping and wagging their tails in excitement at beholding their master again.

"You just choose not to use them, because they aren't as jolly," noted the other wryly.

While Lord Wyldon stepped forward and petted the canines in the first cage, his soft tone as he stroked their bellies and heads implying that he was as fond of the dogs as they were of him, Owen scowled at the mockery of his favorite term. Then, he decided that he could exact revenge by employing it more than he typically did. That always aggravated everyone, since most people preferred "good" to "jolly" for some bizarre reason. Honestly, jolly was a lot more exhilarating word. Still, it was fine that he was the only one who used it, since that meant he had a trademark. He could live with being the person who always said "jolly" until he became a celebrated bandit killer.

"Come here, and meet them." Finishing his greeting, Wyldon spun around to face Owen. As Owen strode forward, the dogs began growling, revealing sharp, menacing jaws. Now their resemblance to the wolves they had been trained to hunt was apparent to anyone with one eighth of an eyeball, and he halted instantly, the blood in his veins solidifying.

"Quiet!" Lord Wyldon raised his hand, and the howls subsided abruptly. Obviously, the dogs weren't just adored. They were impeccably trained, as well, and there were still no surprises there.

"Come here," repeated Wyldon, waving his squire forward again. "They won't bite you."

Still unsure about whether they would rip off his arm, Owen advanced a hesitant step. When they didn't bark, he took another, and another. Soon, he was standing beside his knight-master.

"Hold out your hand and let them sniff it," continued Lord Wyldon, who obviously had been smelling horse dung so long that it was starting to impair his higher order reasoning capabilities. There was no way that Owen was going to extend his vulnerable hand out like a platter of desserts to a pack of ravenous canines anytime before Carthak froze over.

"Don't be afraid," his knight-master snapped when his hand remained obstinately motionless, his hard eyes revealing his utter lack of sympathy with his squire's plight. "They'll sense it in you. Just put your hand near their snouts, and let them lick it when they're ready."

Deciding that an angry Lord Wyldon was an even greater menace than a knot of salivating dogs, Owen reached out a trembling hand and stretched it through the bars into the cage that contained the animals he so feared. For a few seconds that encompassed eons, the canines' moist noses examined his cringing, sweaty hand. Then, the wet noses were transformed sticky tongues that danced across his palm. Great. For the second time in ten minutes, his hand was being coated with animal slobber.

Clearly, this squire job did not pay nearly as well as it should, although that was unsurprising, given that squires, unfortunately, received no salary for all the hours of back-breaking labor they put in. In a lot of fashions, being a squire in Tortall was comparable to being a slave in Carthak. The only distinctions were that squires in Tortall were of noble stock and had a stab at freedom and prestige once their four years of drudgery were finally completed, whereas most Carthaki slaves would never be emancipated and had no hope of attaining any respectable status in society― they were the true flowers that would never bloom come any spring.

Seeing that his dogs were not about to chomp of his squire's arm any time in the immediate future, Lord Wyldon nodded his head toward the rear of the dogs' cell, where a pile of animal waste had accumulated. "Keeping dogs is not all fun and games," he announced, and Owen wondered if the man regarded having his limbs severed off by vicious jaws entertaining. Knowing his former training master as he did, the answer was probably. "They also require someone to clean up after them."

"Why do I have the feeling that the someone you're referring to is me?" Owen's gray eyes contracted suspiciously as he eyed the older gentleman.

"Because you're learning," stated Lord Wyldon dryly. "The shovel's in the corner by the door. I advise that you get started at once. Tomorrow we really begin our training, so you should try to rest as much as possible. You'll need all the sleep you can get and more."

Without waiting for a reply, he pivoted on his heel and marched out of the kennels. Once he was positive that the temperamental man was out of earshot, Owen grumbled, "Well, he sure knows how to put an optimistic twist on things."

After alleviating some of his exasperation with this whole scenario through an eyeroll, Owen crossed over to fetch the shovel from beside the door. As he returned to the cage, the shovel heavy between his fingers, he concluded that he despised dogs since they created so many droppings, and picking them up was a really shitty task. Honestly, this was going to be worse than scooping up after his horse, because at least the horse was his. These canines were all Wyldon's pleasure, and none of his. In fact, he was beginning to suspect that they would be the bane of his existence while he was in Cavall.

He was just about to start picking up the dung when the dogs growled again. For a frantic instant, he imagined that they were threatening him. He had barely devised a couple of primitive methods in which to employ the shovel as a weapon when he heard the door of the edifice creak ajar, implying that the dogs weren't barking at him on this particular occasion, but rather the latest intruder on their dominion.


	5. Chapter 5

Author's Note: I'm sorry if this chapter isn't very good. I typed it all up once, but then Word in all its infinite wisdom deleted it, and, as I had written it down nowhere else, I had to reinvent it, and my aggravation might have made it worse. Apart from that, I hope you'll enjoy my take on how Owen and Margary met.

Unpleasant Duties and Bad Days

As a slight figure in a forest green cape slipped through the door into the kennel, the dogs ceased barking. Instead, they commenced yelping and wagging their tails exuberantly in a welcome. Apparently, the intruder wasn't a brigand, after all. As the newcomer strode ever closer, the lantern in its hand cast an ever expanding halo of illumination, and revealed the being carrying it to be an adolescent female.

"Hello, Squire Owen," she greeted him, as she approached.

Squinting at her as she arrived outside the cage he was in, he sought a greater clarity of her features, aiming to find something that separated her from the other girls he had met that evening. Unfortunately, there wasn't much of anything. There had been one blond among the young ladies he had met, and one redhead. However, she wasn't either. No, she was one of the brunettes. Well, she did have brown eyes that were similar in hue to Wyldon's, so perhaps she was one of his two daughters. That was wonderful. Now, if only he could recall her name.

"Hello, Lady, um…" He trailed off, praying for a sudden remembrance of her name inspired by a merciful Mithros that never came. When it didn't come, he found himself yearning for a herald. One of them would have been able to provide him with her name and her title, complete with the appropriate prepositions. Honestly, where was a herald when you required one? Most likely hanging out in the same place that the gods hid whenever you appealed to them, Owen concluded in an unusual display of pessimism.

"Margary," she supplied, what might have been a smile curving up her strawberry colored lips. "Really, Player, you missed your cue. This is the part of the script where you're supposed to declare with incredible pompousness that you could never forget the names or the faces of the four charming young ladies you met today, and that if I hadn't been so hasty, you would have recalled my name on your own."

"But that'd be a lie," protested Owen, neglecting to mention exactly which of her comments would have been a falsehood.

"All good manners are is lying," remarked Margary flippantly, coiling a tendril of her dark hair that had escaped from her bun around her index finger without seeming to be cognizant of what she was doing. Then, when the dogs moaned for her attentions, her grin was transformed into a giggle, and she bent down to stroke the coats of the nearest critters, cooing over them in a way many males would dream of being adored by a young woman.

Rolling his eyes at her poor taste, Owen returned to scooping up the droppings left behind by the canines that everyone, for some unfathomable reason, favored more than him. As he did so, Margary elaborated, "I mean, when you first come into contact with someone, you're supposed to inquire into how they are feeling, correct?"

"That's right," Owen agreed. However, despite his affirmation, he was hardly listening to a word that escaped her mouth, because he was preoccupied with dumping a shovelful of dung on the mound of it that was piled in the corner of the cage, which was imprisoning him far more than it was the dogs.

"Then, since the person you're conversing with realizes that you don't care a whit about how they are doing, they respond that they are feeling fine, even if it is obvious that they are feeling more rotten than putrid meat. After that, you ask how they are doing, and they, being as courteous as you, respond that they are doing well, even if they, too, have had a horrid day. When that script is exhausted, the exchange becomes awkward since everybody has to feign an abrupt interest in weather, pretending that they couldn't see for themselves that it's snowy out and crooning over an unoriginal comparison of icicles to shards of glass as if it were the most marvelous piece of poetry ever devised by mankind. That's all good manners boil down too. Even a smile is really just an excuse to bar teeth at one another under the guise of courtesy."

"There's a fascinating observation," mumbled Owen, who had only heard the first bits. He was starting to wish fervently that she would give up on the possibility of having a worthwhile exchange with him. Mithros, why wouldn't she just feed the blasted dogs the bacon strips she had pulled out of her pocket and leave him to complete his shitty task alone?

"Anyway, how are you faring, Squire Owen?" inquired Margary, seemingly oblivious to Owen's disinterest with the exchange. As she posed this question, shredded the bacon into even more miniscule slices and offered it to the dogs out of her outstretched palm.

"I'm fine," Owen answered vaguely, continuing to pile canine droppings on the mountain and not absorbing half of her words. While he did so, the dogs gobbled up the meat Margary extended toward them.

"Oh, for the love of the Great Mother Goddess," griped Margary, sighing with a drama that would have shamed any self-respecting troubadour, as the canines finished devouring their snack. Although they had consumed all the bacon, she remained stationary, kneeling on the cold stone floor, and maintained her conversation with him. "Here I was thinking that I had finally stumbled across an honest man, and then you have to go and burst my bubble by telling a fib like that."

"It's not a lie," he argued, dumping another shovelful of dung on the mound.

"Yes, it is," she countered, impatience etched like a dagger into her tone. "It is as plain as the stars in the sky that you despise having to pick up after what you believe are stupid dogs."

"I don't reckon that the dogs are dumb," Owen informed her.

Margary made no reply to this assertion. Instead, she just arched a testy eyebrow in his direction, so that her relationship with Lord Wyldon was thrown into sharp relief, something that did nothing to set Owen at ease. In fact, it discomfited him.

"Seriously, I don't think that they are the idiotic ones," he insisted. "After all, it's not them that are picking up our waste. All they have to do is act like they are delighted to see us, and in return, they are petted, fed, and cleaned. No, we're the foolish ones because we've got the short end of the deal."

"Maybe, but dogs provide us with unconditional love and adoration, and who wouldn't benefit from that?" Margary reasoned. Before he could respond to this challenge, she asked, "Would you care for some help?"

"That would be jolly, if you don't mind." The words burst out of Owen's mouth before he paused to reflect on them, as was typical with him. It was only after he had rendered this reply that it dawned on him that his new knight-master might not appreciate having his daughter scoop up feces. After all, ladies were generally deemed as too delicate for such a task.

Unfortunately, before he could announce that he had changed his mind and that her assistance would not be necessary, she had bent over and removed her pattens, which she had donned to aid her in walking through the inhospitable conditions outside. Then, as he was parting his lips to establish as much, she crossed over to the entrance to the kennels, snatched up another shovel, and joined him in the cage.

Oddly enough, it was only as she neared him that he recognized that her feet were now only covered with stockings, and that she had changed her clothes, for beneath her cape was a black velvet gown instead of the mauve silk one she had been wearing at dinner.

"It's true, then?" he wanted to know, jabbing a finger at her.

"What's true?" a bemused Margary demanded, pouring a load of poop on the pile. "By the way, it's rude to point."

"Weren't you the one who was just stating that all good manners are just falsehoods, so what do you care?" Owen volleyed back, discovering that it was easier to perform his disagreeable chore now that he had company. Knowing that she was about to fire back and turn the whole situation into a spat that she could tattle on to her father about, he went on, "What I meant is that you've changed since supper."

"Of course I have," snorted Margary. "I can't visit the kennels in a dinner gown. If I did, I would needlessly sully a fancy dress, and it is a lady's duty to scrupulously mind the finances of the manor in which she resides. At the convent where I'm learning to be a lady, my instructors harp on that a great deal."

"Oh," was all he could manage to reply to this pronouncement.

"Also, I change a lot because of you," she added.

"What?" Owen gawked at her as if she had recently sprouted three more heads.

"Women have to change their attire so much because of men," clarified Margary brusquely, apparently not detecting the suggestion inherent in her previous remark. "As they claim at the convent, males expect females to be pretty little dolls. That is, they desire us to be beautiful and serene beings that they can come to as a brief refuge from their bloody masculine world of war and violence. Well, for your information, it's not a lean feat functioning as someone's image of peace and beauty. It entails much makeup, dieting by reminding yourself that if you consume one more chocolate bonbon you'll lose your fertile figure and become unattractively obese, and a lot of stuffing into dresses and shoes."

As she concluded her diatribe, Owen observed astutely, "I suspect that I'm not the only one who has had a bad day."

"In that case, your suspicion would be valid," admitted Margary. As she made this confession, a flush rose on her cheeks, which were already crimson from the wintry night. Ever since he was a young boy, Owen had heard any male who fancied himself poetic describe how women's cheeks would be transformed to roses in frigid air, but, if Margary was any indicator, such depictions of ladies were inaccurate. Yes, her cheeks were scarlet, but they weren't the uniform shade of a flower. No, they were splotched with white and red streaks, which made it appear as though she were afflicted with a rash. "I have indeed had a lame day. I've spent virtually all of it sewing linens for my older sister Karina's dowry, and I must have pricked my fingers at least five hundred times."

"Your sister's getting married?" Owen asked, surprised.

"Yes. The knight, Sir Caderyn, whom she's been courting for the past two years has finally mustered the courage to request her hand. Since she's accepted him, they'll be wed in the spring," she explained.

"She chose him? Your father didn't pick for her?" stuttered Owen, as taken aback as he would be if she had declared that two and two equaled twenty. In all honestly, he would have anticipated that a staunch conservative like Lord Wyldon would insist on deciding whom his children married.

"No, he didn't." Perhaps spotting the astonishment on Owen's face, she expanded on the notion. "Father was planning on choosing who we all wed, but he decided against it after he butchered up Anwen's marriage."

"Who's Anwen?" echoed Owen, his confusion causing his forehead to knot.

"She's my eldest sister." For the first time, a genuine shadow darkened Margary's face, as it tautened. "When she left the convent after being trained in the arts befitting a lady, Father arranged for her to marry a young knight, henceforth to be dubbed Sir Bastard. Now, as I recall it, Sir Bastard happened to be a handsome man, who seemed like a decent enough fellow. Naturally, Father imagined that Anwen would be content with him and that she would even come to love him, as Mother came to love Father even though their match was determined by their parents."

After swallowing down a lump that appeared to have built up in her throat, Margary went on, bitterness etched into every syllable, "Father is a good man, and sometimes I don't think he comprehends that not everybody is as honorable, or even half as noble, as he is. It never occurred to him that while he would never beat his wife, not everyone has similar compunctions. Sir Bastard sure didn't."

"You don't mean―" Too appalled to even complete the idea, Owen trailed off. His fingers were numb about the handle of his shovel now, and he was clutching it so tightly that his knuckles were as pale as marble. Real men didn't hit women, and knights were supposed to be chivalrous. Sir Bastard must have been the Joren of his year. It was a tragedy that there were so many Jorens inhabiting the earth, and not enough Kels.

"I do." Displacing her ire with Sir Bastard, Margary lobbed a shovelful of dung at the mound in the corner. In her temper, her aim was a bit off, and the feces slammed into the wall with a satisfying thud before tumbling down onto the pile of droppings. "The scumbag slapped her around more than once. Finally, Anwen, who was always a bashful creature, had the guts to tell Mother what was happening to her. When Father heard, he was furious― it was like watching a dragon from the Divine Realms breathe fire. Well, to make a long story short, he was able to arrange a divorce for Anwen."

"What did Sir Bastard do?" whispered Owen, captivated by this real-life horror story. Long ago, he had forgotten his job of cleaning up the poop.

"Nothing," Margary stated, her contempt for Sir Bastard perfectly clear. "Initially, he protested, but there wasn't much he could do. After all, Father could always challenge him to a joust, and Sir Bastard, like most men who beat their wives, was a coward. Frankly, the last thing he wanted was a joust with a man who nobody can unseat, and who can unseat everyone else."

On a whole, Owen could relate to Sir Bastard's logic on that count. He wouldn't wish to joust against Lord Wyldon, either, unless he decided that he wanted to commit suicide, something, which, given how his squireship was progressing thus far, was not as far-fetched as it sounded. In part to drag his brain away from such dreary musings and in part because he was intrigued by her awful, raw story, Owen pressed, "What happened to Anwen? Did she marry again?"

"No." Margary shook her head grimly, swiping a tear from her eye. "That scumbag ruined her trust for men. Now, she can't bear to be in contact with any males, not even Father. To stay away from the men she fears so much, she lives in the convent where I'm learning to be a lady. The priestesses don't complain, in part because they feel sympathetic to her, and also because Father provided them with a considerable sum for her upkeep. She spends every day teaching girls how to please men she couldn't bear to look at, and she is so frail and gentle that she melts right into the background of the four gray towers. I couldn't live there forever, but she is as glad as she'll ever be there, my poor, traumatized older sister."

"Mithros have mercy on her," Owen mumbled a benediction he surmised would be useless. After all, harm had already called on Anwen and inflicted its damage upon her.

"That's a prayer that's better addressed to the Goddess," Margary corrected him. "Mithros does justice; the Goddess handles requests for mercy. Besides, the Goddess is supposed to have a soft spot in her heart for women, especially abused ones. I guess it's good somebody does."

"If requests for mercy are supposed to be addressed to the Goddess, no wonder none of my prayers for it have been answered, for I've been giving my appeals to Mithros," noted Owen, trying to lighten the mood with a smile.

"It's hard to be certain," she advised him, her lips quirking upward. "The ways of the gods and the goddesses are not to be understood by mere mortals."

"Perhaps the gods and the goddesses themselves don't comprehend them," proposed Owen, voicing one of his favorite theological theories as he added more dung to the mountain they were constructing together of canine waste.

"Probably not," Margary seconded. Now, she was actually beaming, and Owen congratulated himself for raising her out of a depression he had unintentionally brought her into.

"You know who else I don't understand," he continued, hoping to brighten her outlook still more.

"Who?" Margary asked, cocking her head a degree to the left as she gazed at him.

"The Stump," smirked Owen.

"The who?" she repeated, staring blankly at him as if he had started babbling on about the weather in Scanran.

"It's a nickname that us pages and squires have for your father." As soon as the last tidbit of explanation departed from Owen's mouth, he saw how tactless he had been. If there was an award to be earned for stupidity, he would be receiving it for this epic blunder. Telling Wyldon's daughter about his epithet was one manner in which to ensure that he heard it, and, if he heard it, Owen would be murdered by this time tomorrow. That settled it. He would have to see a Healer as soon as possible to have his tongue removed so it would not cause him to lose any more valuable limbs.

Luckily, to Owen's astonished relief, Margary just chuckled, and commented, "It fits him, you know, because he's so stiff, but I've always pictured him as more of a poker type, myself."


	6. Chapter 6

Big Mouths

The next week passed in a haze of exhaustion for Owen. For the most part, his mornings were devoted to studying maps, improving his memory, and learning how to do mathematical equations that he had never realized existed, nonetheless thought he would need to know how to employ as a knight. Perhaps it would have been easier if he had chosen to become a Mithran monk, instead. Of course, the vow of silence initiates were compelled to take would probably have killed him within a week. After all, he could not stand to be quiet, because Mithros had to have bequeathed him with a functioning tongue for a reason.

Then, after the morning of his brain sinking into mental quagmire, he and Lord Wyldon would go outside for weapons' training following a lunch that never served to adequately restore Owen's flagging energy. It was during the afternoon that he practiced archery, swordsmanship, horsemanship, and tilting under his knightmaster's ever critical scrutiny.

On the seventh day of Owen's stay in Cavall, which already felt like it had lasted an eternity, he was readying Happy, who was just starting to answer to his new name rather than Windtreader, for a run at the quatrain when Lord Wyldon approached him.

"Today we're going to experiment with something new, Jesslaw," declared Wyldon, striding over to his squire. A dangerous spark simmering in his coal eyes, he continued, "Even those of us who are stumps can endorse change from time to time."

"Change, my lord?" stammered an appalled Owen. Gulping, he concluded that his charming knightmaster must be aware of the appellation that the pages and squires had generously furnished him with. Well, he shouldn't be faulting Owen with the disagreeable epithet he had been saddled with. After all, Owen hadn't devised the nickname― that honor resided solely with Nealan of Queenscove. Unfortunately, such logic did not appear to be governing Lord Wyldon's behavior, since he seemed to be blaming Owen for his being dubbed the "Stump."

That knowledge twisted Owen's innards like a hurricane, and all he could say for certain was that the change Wyldon had planned would be pure torture. In fact, he probably would not emerge from whatever it was in a couple of pieces, or even alive. Mithros, he should have written his will before he had departed Corus.

"Yes, change," Lord Wyldon reiterated crisply. "You know, things would progress much faster if you didn't repeat every word that comes out of my mouth."

"I'm not sure I want things to go any more quickly at the moment," mumbled Owen, who was more than willing to stave off his impending doom as long as humanly possible. When the older man glowered at him, he amended hastily, tripping over the syllables, "I mean, I couldn't hear you, my lord, and I just wanted to confirm your words."

"That wouldn't be necessary if you attended to my every word, as you're supposed to," commented Lord Wyldon, somehow managing to put more bite in the remark than was present in the frigid weather. Before Owen could respond to this cold assertion, he jabbed his chin at Owen's steed, as he went on, "You're going to attempt to tilt against me for the first time."

Recollecting Lord Wyldon's previous admonishment for posing pointless inquiries, Owen stifled the "What?" that was searing his lips, begging for exit.

Luckily, Lord Wyldon appeared to detect his squire's bafflement, for he elaborated, "There's no need to look as though you've just been attacked by a pack of Stormwings. What you're about to do is just like tilting at the quatrain. The only difference is that the target is always in motion, and the target will be striving to unseat you, as well."

With that, Lord Wyldon spun on his heel and walked over to his mount. As he climbed onto his horse, he hollered across the yard, which he had ordered the servants to shovel clear of snow, "Aim for the center of my shield right now. That way, you'll have the best odds of hitting my shield. Are you ready?"

Ready, Owen determined in that instant, was a highly subjective adjective. Yes, he, like his knightmaster, was dressed in his equipment and had mounted his stallion, but he wasn't prepared to be knocked through the air until he landed with a bump on the uncompromising, hard winter ground. Yet, he recognized that stalling would not be his salvation and would only anger the older man, which was not on his list of one hundred items that he required at the moment.

With these notions swarming his head, Owen pumped his lance up and down in the training yard affirmation that existed since it was challenging to spot when someone decked out in armor moved his head.

His heart pounding and his ears thudding with the ebb and flow of blood in his brain, Owen spurred Happy forward. Gritting his teeth, he discovered that following the movement of his knightmaster's shield was impossible, as the knight kept bouncing up and down on his horse's back as he prepared himself to strike.

Since he was so preoccupied with finding the right location on his target to hit, or, indeed, even figuring out how to smack any part of his onrushing target, Owen didn't watch Lord Wyldon's lance. In fact, he only realized that the man's weapon had shifted at all when something rammed into his shield arm with enough force to keel over an oxen. The next second, all thought receded from his mind as he watched dully as the dead trees with their barren arms stretched imploringly to the pewter gray sky flickered by him. After that, he barely had the time required to maneuver himself into a better landing position before he crashed onto the dirt.

As all the hues of the rainbow pinwheeled around in his brain, Owen shoved himself upright, cursing under his breath, and mounted Happy once again. This time, he managed to slam Wyldon's shield with his lance, although he was still unseated, as he had anticipated he would be.

After that, everything faded into a cycle, as endless and eternal as the circle of life. First, he would clamber onto his horse. Then, he would lurch at Wyldon, who would unhorse him. After he had been unseated, he would sour past the leafless trees before whacking onto the earth. Once he had struggled to stand, he would stumble onto his saddle once more. Before long, he could no longer provide an estimate of how much time he had squandered being thus mistreated, because it felt as if he had been born doing this stupid tilting exercise, would spend the rest of his existence laboring on this futile endeavor, and finally die here, performing this rite for the quintillionth time.

Therefore, he was jolted out of his daze of agony and tedium when Lord Wyldon materialized after one of his falls and offered him a hand up.

"Go into the stables and take care of your mount," commanded Wyldon, as Owen accepted his proffered hand and scrambled to his feet. "Then clean yourself up. Supper is in half an hour, and I expect you to be punctual."

"Yes, sir," Owen grumbled, deciding that he definitely did not wish to be tardy, because his knightmaster might punish him with more tilting practice, and, now that he had stopped, he doubted that he could stomach any more of it.

As Lord Wyldon led his stallion toward the stables, Owen trudged over to Happy, whom he guided slowly back to the stables, his leg muscles protesting vociferously with every step he took. Feeling as if his arms had been replaced with stones, Owen tended to his new steed before he returned to the castle.

His legs had already depleted their reserves of energy by the time he reached the entrance hall, and he glanced about him for a piece of furniture where he could sit for a minute and regain his breath before he raced up to his bedchamber to prepare himself for dinner. When he gazed around him, he saw a mahogany bench situated in the far corner by the stairs that ascended to the upper levels of the manor. On it was Margary, who was shelling peas.

"Do you mind if I sit here for a moment?" he asked, flushed and panting as he arrived beside her.

"Oh, no, of course not." Seemingly flustered, Margary gathered her skirts and pushed them aside with a rustle on the flagstones as she presumably made more room for him on the bench, even though he could have been accommodated just fine without her adaptation.

"Thanks." Somehow, Owen mustered enough strength to offer her a wan grin as he settled himself beside her. Remembering how she had assisted him on his first evening here and spotting how rapidly her fingers were dancing over the peas she was shelling, he stated, "I'd be happy to help you."

"You must indeed be valiant," pronounced Margary, smirking.

"Why do you say that?" Owen frowned, bemused by her claim.

"Well, most men wouldn't be caught dead doing something as blatantly feminine as cooking, so you must indeed be confident of your masculinity," explained Margary.

"It's not that," a still discomfited Owen countered. "It's just that you aided me with the dogs my first night here, and I think that I should return the favor."

"I don't need assistance with this easy task," she educated him grimly. "However, Squire Owen, you may come upstairs and sew my sister's dowry with the rest of us ladies to pay off your debt whenever you desire."

"That will be never, because I'm not that certain of my masculinity," announced Owen.

"Well, they do say that there's no such thing as a perfect man," sighed Margary.

"Are you going after women, then?" teased Owen. The second the words emerged from his errant lips, he chided himself. Honestly, where had he left his brains today? That was not a question one would pose to the daughter of one's knightmaster if one was attached to life outside the Dark God's realm, which he was.

"As soon as I can find one prettier than me," retorted Margary.

"That won't take long," he answered in kind.

"I recommend that you see a healer as soon as possible," she volleyed back. "After all, it can't be safe for you to go into battle with eyes that poor." Before he could fire back, her tone softened as she noted, "You look tired."

"I'm sure that's nothing compared to how I feel," griped Owen, who was convinced that now that he had become accustomed to sitting here that he would never arise.

"Have some peas," she suggested, dumping a handful of the circular, green vegetables into his palm. "They'll give you an energy boost which you obviously need if you're intending to climb the stairs anytime this evening, nonetheless prior to supper."

"They are okay to eat raw?" Owen examined the food she poured into his hand dubiously, since he was always suspicious of vegetables, especially if Kel wasn't there to sample them first and prove they were nontoxic.

"Yes." As Margary bobbed her head in confirmation, a new question occurred to the boy beside her.

"Will I lose my appetite if I eat them?" he pressed.

"Lose your appetite?" Margary's tone implied that this was as silly an inquiry as asking whether a peasant outranked a king. "Only a whole cow can fill a man, and nothing can satisfy the hunger of teenage lads― that's what my mother insists, and I've never seen any reason to doubt her wisdom on this matter."

"I see your point," agreed Owen vaguely while he shoveled the peas into his mouth.

For a moment, there was quiet between them as Owen chewed and swallowed his allocation of vegetables. Then, Margary established with a tentativeness that he already knew was not typical of her, "I'm sorry."

"Why are you sorry?" Owen gawked at her, positive that he had finally gone around the bend entirely and was starting to have delusions. "You didn't do anything."

"I did." Shaking her head, so that her mane of dark hair concealed her face, she admitted, "I told Mother about your nickname for Father. I thought it was funny, it's so boring up there in the solarium all day, and it just came popping out of my mouth while we were sewing and in need of something to converse about. I never dreamed that she would let it slip, but she did when she was joking around with Father. Naturally, he wasn't delighted, and he could figure out where it originated from― his impudent squire whom he just had to punish, as he did today. So, that's why you're so fatigued, and that's why I'm so sorry."

"It's all right," Owen reassured her, mainly because the idea of a girl sobbing all over him was terrifying. It would be even worse if it was this lass, since he would probably be in trouble with Wyldon again if he upset his daughter. Still, Owen couldn't help but wondering if a penalty would be more effective if the reason for punishment was explained. After all, you couldn't avoid a repeat offense if you didn't even recognize what the crime was. "It's as much my fault as it is yours. I should have guarded my tongue better, and I didn't swear you to secrecy, so you did nothing wrong."

"And I didn't swear Mother to secrecy, either, so she did nothing wrong," murmured Margary. Then, her eyes locking with his once more, she demanded, "So, you're not vexed with me, in that case? You're willing to take some of the responsibility instead of blaming it all on me, even though I'm affording you the perfect opportunity to do so, and everyone knows that if at first you don't succeed, you should try to place the fault with someone else?"

"I'm very dumb, which is why I won't blame you for my problems, and I'm too tired to be furious at anyone at the moment, anyway," remarked Owen frankly. "It takes a lot of effort to be irate."

At this, Margary giggled. "You know, I think I like you, Owen of Jesslaw. When I go back to the convent tomorrow, I might even miss you."

"You're going back to the convent?" Owen echoed.

"Yes, that's what I just said. Mithros gave you ears so you could listen," Margary informed him. "I have to return to the convent for my education now that Midwinter holiday is over." Here, her face lit up, as she commented in an offhand manner, "By the way, girls at the convent are permitted to receive letters from males if the priestesses inspect the notes to ensure that there is no innuendo present in them, although how, given their perpetual chastity, they are going to discern it is beyond me. After all, anything they know about it, they shouldn't."

"Are you asking me to write to you?" he faltered. Suddenly, the bowl that was separating their flesh didn't seem wide enough. Now, he was conscious of how close they were. Now, he realized that if he just snaked out a hand, he could touch any part of her, and there was nobody here that could prevent him from doing so. It was just him and Margary. Heat flooded him at the notion, and he pondered why this was so. After all, there was no fire in the entrance hall, and the cavernous room was almost as chilly as outside. In fact, he could see the clouds of his and Margary's breaths in the air as they both inhaled and exhaled, releasing the tension that had abruptly sprouted up between them.

Silence reigned supreme, and Owen contemplated whether her mind was also being assailed with unwelcome thoughts, before Margary observed haughtily, "Don't be ridiculous. A lady of decent breeding, such as myself, would never make the first move with a man. That's the right of the gentleman, and it saves a lady from a great deal of humiliation if the male doesn't return her affections, which is one of the few perks of my gender, so I'll employ it whenever I can."

"I see." Owen chose to establish as much, although he still imagined that she wanted him to write to her. "Lady Margary, do I have your permission to correspond with you at the convent?"

"Why, of course. I'd be honored, Squire Owen." Smiling, Margary rose as she finished shelling the peas. As she got to her feet, she yanked him upright, remarking, "You'd better hurry up and change. Supper is in ten minutes, and Father will murder you if you're late."


	7. Chapter 7

Disclaimer: If I'm Tamora Pierce, that's front page news to me.

Reviews: Feedback is as welcome as a spring day in January.

Author's Note: I'm sorry that it took me longer than usual to update, but this chapter was a difficult one for me to write for some reason, so it demanded more time. Hopefully, you guys will feel that it was worth the wait.

About the broken ankle, I looked up some information on what it is like online, although I think it would be less of a problem in Tortall with all the healers around. (They can fix bones really quickly, it seems, based on what they can do with Kel's nose and stuff.) Still, if I get anything wrong, please point it out. I've never broken a bone before, so I'm just going off research.

Wounds

The days at Cavall passed in a peculiar manner that managed to be both too swift and too slow for Owen. Each day would seem to creep on in an endless stream of fatigue as he went about his training. Yet, when he flopped onto his bed after an exhausting day, he would oftentimes be astonished when he realized that an entire week had gone by. For some reason that defied the laws of mathematics as he comprehended them, a day inched by, but a whole bunch of them could soar by in what felt like the equivalent of the time it required for him to devour a freshly baked cookie. This was, he decided, the phenomenon that boring adults were referring to when they babbled on about how they had no notion of where their youths had gone.

Once a week, the tedium of his routine would be interrupted when he received a letter from Margary. Craftily, Margary had bribed one of the couriers from the convent to deliver Owen's note to him separately, so Lord Wyldon would not be privy to the clandestine correspondence between his youngest child and his squire. Upon being handed Margary's epistle in secret by the messenger, Owen would tuck it in his pocket, where he swore he could sense the warmth of its writer's hand upon it still.

Then, when his busy day had finally concluded, he would read Margary's letter and scribble a response of his own alone in his bedchamber. As soon as his note was completed, he would bustle off to the courier's quarters, where he would give the bribed messenger the epistle. On a whole, it was not the most convenient fashion in which to correspond with one another.

However, it was undeniably preferable to having his arm severed off by Wyldon, which would be what would occur if the man ever discovered that he was illicitly writing to Margary. Actually, when he considered the matter, something he never did at length since he was afraid he would wet himself, Owen wasn't positive that his knightmaster would cease at the arm…

The letters started out briefly and awkwardly. However, by the third note she penned, Margary was comfortable enough to begin griping about how dull life was when she was locked up behind the gray walls of the convent. Soon, Owen found himself bemoaning the training her father tortured him with in his epistles to Margary.

After that, he came to regard the letters he received from Margary as the only sunbeams in his present dreary existence. It was her notes, which still bore the scent of her on the parchment, with their sharp wit, veiled criticisms of life in the convent that the censoring priestesses never failed to miss, hints of sympathy with his plights, and tidbits of advice that motivated him.

In return, he stove to hearten her in his replies, although he suspected that he failed dismally in this endeavor. As such, in his mind, it was a mystery why she continued to write to him. Perhaps he merely possessed for her the glamour of the outside world, or maybe it was something else that attracted her to him as he was to her.

Eight weeks and eight letters after Margary departed for the convent, the snow began melting. Soon, there were only blotches of white on the earth that stood out like clumps of straggling gray hair on an almost entirely bald man's crown. As the snow and ice retreated, the ground thawed. Owen initially only appreciated this fact because it made his tumbles from his saddle when he practiced jousting with Wyldon less painful.

When he learned that the thaw meant that he and his knightmaster could now travel up to the Scanran border to take part in the conflict that would intensify as spring approached, Owen was ecstatic. Finally, he would be able to leave Cavall and experience some real action.

During their journey northward, he and Wyldon joined the progress that was touring Tortall to introduce Prince Roald's Yamani bride, whose name Owen could never remember, to the country she would reign. This was a bonus because he could finally make contact with his friends again. Yet, it was also a drawback, since, not only did he have to serve at the almost nightly banquets, he was also reunited with Master Oakbridge, who really should have perished of heart failure by now. On the fourth afternoon of their time spent with the progress, Owen stumbled across another drawback to it.

"Jesslaw!" Lord Wyldon's voice pierced Owen like an arrow. Jumping in alarm, he dropped the cloth he had been employing to polish his knightmaster's armor in the tent they shared. Before he could respond, a crimson-faced Wyldon marched into the tent. As the flaps slammed shut in his wake, the irate man barked, "Jesslaw, I'd like a word with you right now."

"I didn't do anything wrong," protested Owen automatically. At any rate, he couldn't recollect anything he had done that would prompt his knightmaster to fly off the handle like this.

"A courier came from the convent today." Wyldon's eyes locked on his squire's, and they were even more pitiless and shrewd than ever.

"Oh?" was all Owen could think to say. His jaw wasn't functioning as well as it ought. Doubtlessly, it was taking its cue from his brain, which was stupefied. He had the nasty suspicion that Lord Wyldon knew about his letters to Margary and appreciated Owen's corresponding with his daughter about as much as people did a bandit stealing their purse.

" 'Oh,' indeed. This came for you," snarled Wyldon, thrusting an envelope with Margary's seal stamped upon it. Margary's broken seal, which meant that either the courier had slit open the letter and pursued it, or else that Wyldon had. Glancing at Wyldon's face, which resembled a massive tomato, Owen surmised that it had been his knightmaster who had infringed on his privacy.

"The seal is broken," Owen mumbled before he could stop his tongue from forming the words, which he wasn't sure, now that he thought about them, were appropriate.

"Of course it is," snapped Wyldon. "A father has an obligation to protect his daughter. That means that he has to know what she is writing to men, especially to those whom he wasn't even aware that she was corresponding with."

"You did open it, then?" Even though he knew he should have been more petrified since he was dealing with a wrathful Lord Wyldon, Owen was furious with the violation of his right to privacy. After all, his notes to Margary were private.

"As your knightmaster, I can open any mail you receive, and, because you've taken to starting up correspondences that you're aware that I'll disapprove of, perhaps I'll start monitoring the letters you send and receive more carefully," hissed Lord Wyldon.

"It's wrong to read someone else's mail, my lord," Owen stuttered, his mind still too numb to absorb most of the other's assertion.

"Don't presume to lecture me on honor, squire," growled Lord Wyldon, looking as if he desired nothing more than to slap the adolescent he addressed upside the head until all his teeth toppled out. "You were the one who had the gall to write to my daughter without my permission."

Before Owen could muster an answer to this, Wyldon ordered in a tone that was just as menacing, "Come on. Let's go do some tilting practice. You certainly could use it."

"I don't want to, my lord," Owen informed him instantly. No, he most definitely did not wish to joust with his knightmaster at the moment. Although he had practiced tilting against the man for weeks now, he had not trained with Wyldon when he was scarlet with fury since the first day he had tried jousting. Frankly, that was not an experiment he yearned to repeat, but it appeared as if he was about to do so. Worse still, Wyldon was looking even more infuriated than he had the first day. Curse it, Owen knew he should have written his will when he had the chance.

"I don't care if you want to be a pony." Lord Wyldon stretched out his hands, clenched them around Owen's wrists, and tugged the startled boy to his feet. "If you remove your brain from your pocket long enough to use it, you'll recognize that I didn't ask if you wanted to tilt with me. Rather, I commanded that you do so, and you won't disobey if you have even the faintest idea what is good for you at the moment."

"I'm coming, my lord," Owen conceded immediately. While he didn't want to joust with a cross Wyldon, he had determined that it wouldn't be prudent to push the man anymore. After all, if he shoved his knightmaster into the depths of insanity, it would be Owen who suffered the consequences.

Ten minutes later, Owen found himself soaring off Happy's back onto the unrelenting dirt of the practice field. After that, the jousting practice was a blur. He would propel himself off the ground, mount his stallion, charge at Wyldon with his lance aloft, and be unseated again so rapidly that his brain had only just finished absorbing that he was no longer spread-eagled on the earth when he landed with a smack on it again. If it was nothing else, it was an exercise in futility.

All of Wyldon's training sessions were nothing less than demanding, but this one was the worst he had ever endured. It felt longer than any of the others in the fraction of his brain that was dimly trying to deduce how much time had elapsed since the beginning of the torture session. However, that wasn't what was most dreadful about it.

No, Wyldon seemed to be putting even more force than was typical with him behind every thrust of his lance. This meant that Owen's arm was soon sorer than it had ever been, and his whole body was aching from all the times he had whacked into the ground. All he could say was that the Shang warriors had been lying about the way they had instructed the pages to fall being the best one, because he was touching down exactly as they had taught him to, and it was still very painful, especially when it happened repeatedly like this. Really, Wyldon should have been an interrogator.

After what felt like eons of torment, but was probably only a couple of hours, an exhausted Owen forgot to twist into the proper landing pose when he was unsaddled. Thus, he slapped into the earth harder than ever, and his ankle clicked in protest at the harsh treatment it had been subjected to. What seemed like a million pins and needles stabbed into Owen's ankle, and he was certain that his bone wasn't intended to make that noise, since it wasn't a musical instrument, after all.

"Quit stalling!" ordered Wyldon's crisp voice from the opposite end of the field. "Get up. I don't like being kept waiting."

"Maybe it is time to stop," suggested a man who was leaning against the fence, watching the practice session. Squinting because the sun was setting to the rear of the figure, Owen discerned Lord Matthias of Nond, who was a close friend of Lord Wyldon's and who was about the same age as Owen's knightmaster. On a whole, Owen liked Lord Matthias. Even though he was a staunch conservative, Lord Matthias lacked the cold stiffness of Wyldon, which could only be constituted as a plus. "You've been out for hours now. Your squire has had enough, I suspect."

As Lord Matthias established as much, Happy wandered over to Owen and licked his face, urging him to stand. Gritting his teeth, Owen grabbed the horse's saddle and yanked himself upright. Aware that this was not the proper manner in which to raise himself, he glanced at Wyldon, anticipating a rebuke. Fortunately, though, his knightmaster was too preoccupied with scowling at Matthias to notice what he did.

"If he is tired, then it is good to push his limits," declared Wyldon inexorably. "It might save his life in battle one day. Now, climb onto your mount again, Jesslaw, and let's continue."

Exhaling gustily, Owen clambered onto his steed. Once he had settled himself, he closed his fingers around his lance and raced down the field toward his onrushing knighmaster. The next instant, a spasm of agony was rippling through his arm as he flew through the air and slammed onto the dirt once more.

Although he had landed in the correct position this time, the fall was still too much for Owen's wounded ankle, apparently, for he heard another, more resounding, snap from the battered limb. Staring down at it, all he could think was that it absolutely wasn't supposed to bend like that. Stupidly, he attempted to move it into its normal position. It didn't budge, but constellations swam dizzily before his eyes.

Mithros, he had never experienced any agony that even approached this. It went beyond mind-numbing. Moisture flooded his eyes, and he noted absently that, although he had utilized the idiom all of his life, he had never known what it meant to have eyes watering in pain. Now he did and wished that he was as ignorant as he had been two minutes ago. The knowledge was certainly not worth the anguish.

"Get up!" Wyldon's bark barely penetrated the fog that clouded Owen's head.

"I can't," he ground out. At the moment, it demanded all his restraint not to sob like a newborn. Yes, pages had broken bones frequently under Wyldon, but he had never been among them by a trick of luck he still didn't understand. The only thing that was preventing him from bawling was the fact that his knightmaster was present, and Lord Wyldon was not an individual one felt comfortable sniveling in the vicinity of.

"Can't or won't?" demanded Wyldon frigidly.

Before Owen could reply, Matthias leaped over the fence and crossed over to the young man's crumpled form. "Brace yourself," he warned Owen before touching the injured ankle.

When the man's hand felt his misaligned bone, Owen howled. He didn't care about how puerile it appeared. At the moment, he wanted his mother's shoulder to cry on, too. It wasn't that Matthias' touch was rough, it was just that anything brushing against his wounded limb was a torment.

"He shouldn't, at any rate," pronounced Lord Matthias, as Wyldon rode over. "His ankle is broken."

For a moment, Wyldon went as pale as snow before animals relieved themselves upon it, and made no response. Taking advantage of his mentor's silence, Owen mumbled, "It went click last time I fell."

"Why didn't you tell me that before?" snarled Wyldon, his face changing from ashen to crimson in record time. When Owen opened his mouth to point out that Wyldon hadn't seemed particularly approachable earlier, his knightmaster cut him off brusquely as he went on, "Stay here. Don't move that ankle an inch. I'm fetching a healer. One day you may have to walk on an ankle like that, but at the present, there is no reason to risk making your injury worse by moving you when we can easily bring a healer here. Matthias, would you stay with this young moron while I get a healer? I don't want him doing anything else foolish."

"Of course I will," Matthias agreed, and Wyldon strode away to fetch a healer, still shaking his head at what he deemed as Owen's thickheadedness.

"I'm dead," muttered Owen, gawking after his departing knightmaster. "He was mad enough before this training session. Now he'll really murder me."

"He's not truly angry at you," Matthias explained softly. "He was much more vexed with himself."

"So he took it out on me, sir," Owen grumbled, forgetting for a second that the man he addressed was Wyldon's buddy. Therefore, he was not someone with whom to lodge such a complaint. "That's not fair."

"Rest assured that whatever he does to you, he never means you any harm," commented Lord Matthias. "He may seem cold to you, but he is never cruel. He is not a brute."

Owen couldn't invent a response to this assessment, and quiet settled between them until Lord Wyldon returned with one of Duke Baird's healers.

"This will hurt," the healer cautioned Owen. Once Owen had braced himself, the healer outstretched her hand and examined his ankle with it. Although her palms were gentle, Owen howled again. Obviously, the bracing had done no good.

"It's swelling and is painful to the touch. Yes, it's broken," the healer confirmed. Then, a cool wave washed through Owen's ankle, and so gradually that at first he missed it, the agony receded from Owen's ankle. By the time the healer stopped, the pain in Owen's ankle had been replaced with the drowsiness that healings tended to instill in a body.

"Try to avoid more broken ankles in the future," advised the healer, as she rose. "The more often you have to have your ankles mended, the more resistant you become to the treatment. Other than that, you should be fine. Just have some fruit or juice to restore some energy into you, and make sure you rest. By this time tomorrow, you should feel as you normally do."

"I'll see to both of your horses, since the pair of you have enough to contend with," Matthias remarked, turning to follow the healer as she left. "That will remind me of my glorious days as a squire." Then, before Owen or Wyldon could thank him, he had departed with their steeds.

"Are you ready to get up?" Wyldon asked, his tone milder than usual, and his eyes less hard.

Mutely, Owen nodded. He prepared to shove himself to his feet, but halted when he saw a palm extended to him. "Thanks, sir," he said, as he took the hand and was assisted up.

A discomfiting silence descended between them as they returned to their tent. As they walked along the lane that had been erected between the tents, Wyldon wordlessly withdrew an apple from his pocket and proffered it to his squire, observing, "I took it to feed Heart, but I think you need it more right now."

"Thank you, sir," Owen repeated, and quiet fell between them again. The silence endured while they entered their tent. It was only when Owen collapsed onto his mattress that Wyldon spoke.

"I suppose I owe you an apology, Squire." The words were stiff, and Owen was convinced that he had misheard the man.

"Sorry, my lord?"

"I said I owe you an apology. Gods above, you really are deaf." Despite the callous nature of the observation, there was no real acerbity behind the words coming out of Wyldon's lips. "Training knights isn't easy. You have to tread the razor thin line between being so soft on them that they die as soon as they experience warfare, but you can't brutalize your students, either. Today I might have crossed that boundary. I should have stopped the first time you didn't get up."

"I know why you didn't, sir," Owen declared bluntly, staring unflinchingly into his knightmaster's dark eyes. "You were angry about my writing to Margary."

"Perhaps," allowed Lord Wyldon dryly, absently rubbing his arm where it had been ravaged by a stormwing. "You should have requested my permission before you corresponded with my youngest daughter, Owen."

"Why?" the addressed demanded, the apple Wyldon had furnished him with restoring his energy enough for him to argue. "She's not your property, my lord, and you said that she could marry whoever she wanted. It follows logically that she can write to whoever she wants to, then."

"Are you planning on being the one she chooses to wed, in that case?" Wyldon's eyebrows arched into question marks.

"No, sir," Owen stammered reflexively. "We're just friends."

"If you're just friends, I suggest that you refrain from hurting my daughter in any fashion, because, if you do, you'll find that I'll break far more than your ankle." Lord Wyldon's tone clearly conveyed his skepticism about his squire's contention. "After all, our friends should have the highest claim on our charity, and we should never wound them. However, if you're just friends, you might not be interested in the handkerchief Margary sewed for you."

"She sewed me a handkerchief?" echoed Owen, his mouth agape.

"Yes," affirmed Wyldon, his lips pursing. "If I know my child, the red robins on it are blood stains."

"May I have the handkerchief?" Owen pressed eagerly.

For several long moments that lasted for what felt like three eternities, Wyldon scrutinized Owen, who struggled not to look away. Finally, Wyldon offered a grudging nod of assent. Then, he tossed a silk white handkerchief embroidered with red robins across the tent at Owen along with the opened letter, stipulating, "Don't read the letter now. You need your rest. Tomorrow we're leaving. I've had enough banquets. You can answer it later, when you have the time."

"Yes, my lord," Owen whispered, stowing the handkerchief under his pillow. That way he would be able to sleep more soundly, because the warmth and the scent of Margary would be nearby.

He had settled himself down on his pillow when Lord Wyldon added, "Oh, by the way, Squire, next time I want you to tell me immediately when you sustain an injury. Straining yourself like you did today only increases the damage. One day in a battle, it might be necessary for you to do so in order to survive, but, in training, it's stupid. Tortall can't afford to lose a warrior in a practice session."


	8. Chapter 8

Author's Note: This is not exactly the most exciting chapter known to man, but I think it clarifies some of what happened last chapter, so I feel like it is necessary, even if it isn't the most breathtaking adventure that ever occurred. (If you don't believe that the priestesses would let Margary's letter go, just remember that censors are seldom the brightest stars in the galaxy by several orders of magnitude, and they tend to miss irony.)

Disclaimer: If you believe I am Tamora Pierce, it is beyond my powers to assist you. Just check into a mental hospital after reading and reviewing, okay? Please be careful not to hurt yourself in the process.

Reviews: Reviews are always welcome, especially during AP weeks.

The Truth Above All

As Lord Wyldon had promised, he and his squire left the progress shortly after dawn the next morning. Like always, quiet settled between them as they rode, because the Lord of Cavall had never been one for idle chatter, and Owen had learned that it was not prudent to vex his taciturn knightmaster with incessant talking. If Lord Wyldon wanted a conversation, he would start it. If he didn't, it was wisest not to trample on a slumbering giant.

As usual, they also stopped barely long enough to gobble down some dried meat and vegetables at noon. That meant that Owen did not have a chance to read Margary's epistle until after they had set up camp that evening.

In fact, Owen was about to remove her note from his pocket in order to attempt to read it by the flickering, fitful illumination of the campfire, when the older man suddenly addressed him. "Jesslaw, how is your ankle holding up?"

"Huh?" Owen gawked at Lord Wyldon, astonished by the utterly unanticipated inquiry.

"I thought that it was your ankle, not your head, that was injured yesterday," remarked Lord Wyldon, sighing impatiently. "I asked how your ankle was doing."

"Oh, fine, sir," Owen answered automatically, even though his ankle was still a little stiff and sore where he had wounded it yesterday. However, that was nothing to fret about. After all, he always felt that way after he received a healing. Besides, Wyldon wasn't exactly the being one envisioned moaning about injuries to. Since the man was such a stoic, it seemed juvenile to whimper about a broken ankle that had been fixed in his presence, and, if there was one thing that Wyldon could not tolerate, it was whining from a charge.

"Good." Wyldon offered the brief nod of satisfaction that was his only gesture of approval, which he utilized about as frequently as there were blizzards in the Carthaki Islands. For a moment, silence descended between them once more, and Owen was about to withdraw the letter again when Wyldon continued disjointedly, sounding as though rocks had abruptly been shoved into his mouth, "I'm sorry."

"What, my lord?' stuttered Owen. He was as positive as he was that six and six equaled twelve that he had either misheard his mentor or else had missed the sarcasm that must have been lacing the other's tone. After all, the Lord Wyldon he was familiar with would never apologize for his harsh training methods. There wasn't a soft bone in his knightmaster's body, which was why the man's motto appeared to be that if one couldn't stand the heat, one should get out of the fire, as the flames were not about to cease burning in the imminent future.

"I said I was sorry. I apologized to you. That's what people do when they recognize that they behaved like morons, and that the trite aphorism that everyone errs actually applies to them, as well as everyone else," commented Wyldon dryly.

Reflexively, Owen blinked. Once again, he searched for a hint of irony in the other's features. Yet, he couldn't discover such a trace. Apparently, the man was serious. He was truly repentant about breaking his squire's ankle.

"It's okay, sir," Owen responded immediately. He was in a rush to conclude this exchange. No matter what he had thought of Lord Wyldon's treatment of Kel, he had never imagined that the man would ever admit that he had been wrong. Yes, Wyldon had apologized to him yesterday, but he could dismiss that as the product of a fevered mind. This was real and disconcertingly so. Somehow, hearing an apology from Wyldon was like witnessing an apple soar upwards after falling off a tree. Phrased succinctly, it was a violation of the laws of nature. As such, it was an upsetting experience that he wanted to terminate as swiftly as possible. Clearing his throat because he wasn't going to permit himself to display any feebleness in front of the toughest commander in Tortall, he added, "Accidents happen all the time in training, and broken bones mend."

"Yes, broken bones mend," Wyldon muttered, staring absently through the fire at the forest that encircled them like an army besieging a city. The vague look remained entrenched for a second before he locked his gaze on Owen again and resumed, "It's not what I did to you that I'm apologizing for. No, it's why I did it that I'm sorry for. If my goal had been to train you for war, your broken ankle would have been a perfectly justifiable tactic by which to hammer home my lesson. However, my objective was less noble― it was to vent my temper on you. As you should know by now if you paid any attention in ethics at all, it's immoral for someone who is stronger to bully on a weaker individual just because he can. It's simply not fair. Those under our authority should have the highest claim on our compassion and on our justice."

"I thought you said that our friends should have the greatest claim on our compassion, my lord?" Owen demanded, frowning as he recalled their unusual conversation yesterday. Yes, Lord Wyldon must have somehow rammed his head into a massive object of some sort. There was no other rational explanation for the anomalies present in his actions yesterday and this evening.

"I said our friends should have the foremost claim on our charity," corrected Wyldon brusquely.

"Aren't they the same thing, sir?" Owen's forehead knit in consternation as he posed this question.

"Perhaps. Who knows what all those abstract values knights are supposed to embody really mean? Everyone agrees that they are of utmost significance, but everybody has their own definition of what these virtues actually encompass," stated Lord Wyldon crisply. "A smaller percentage of beings then strive to live up to their morals. At that juncture, the fighting ensues between the individuals who attempt to fulfill their ideals, as their definitions of morality and their convictions of which principles should supersede others clash. Even Lady Alanna doesn't awaken every morning with the overwhelming desire to rage forth, do evil, and destroy all morality."

"Maybe whoever wrote the Code of Chivalry should have been more specific, or maybe we should have listened more closely to our philosophy instructor," Owen reasoned. As he established as much, he wondered if perhaps he should have paid more attention during philosophy. After all, maybe that analogy comparing duty to a catapult might come across as logical if one listened to the whole dull lecture. "Then the decent people could stop killing each other and just hunt bandits and stuff, instead."

"You have a much too simplistic view of the world, Jesslaw," snorted Lord Wyldon. Less derisively, he announced, "While we're discussing ethics, I'd like to talk about yours with you."

"I don't have a choice in this, do I, sir?" surmised Owen, eyeing his knightmaster suspiciously across the roaring flames.

"No, you don't," confirmed Lord Wyldon, as cold as always. "Up until yesterday, I could declare that, despite your numerous faults, you are one of the most honest people in Tortall. Now, I'm not so confident, since you lied to me by corresponding with my daughter behind my back. Your deception made me almost as irate as the fact that you were writing to Margary at all."

"It's not fair, my lord," Owen protested. "You accuse me of being too earnest most of the time, and now you're calling me the exact opposite. Besides, I didn't lie. Not really. You never asked if I was corresponding with Margary."

"Don't lie again by feigning innocence, Jesslaw," snapped Lord Wyldon icily. "You and Margary went out of your way to ensure that I would not uncover the letters that passed between you. By acting in such a sly fasion, you violated the trust that was at the core of our relationship."

"I'm sorry, sir," Owen mumbled, scrutinizing what he could see of the ground beneath his feet. He really was penitent. After all, he had never contemplated his behavior with Margary in such terms prior to now. Although he might still have elected to write to her knowing that he would be dashing Lord Wyldon's faith in him, he wished he had realized that he had acquired Wyldon's trust before he had shattered it. Of course, though, one couldn't appreciate what one had until it was gone, which was a pity. Even though there were times when he despised every particle in Wyldon's body for the cruel exercises the man tortured him with, Owen respected his knightmaster and losing his trust was a blow. "I swear that I won't do anything like that again."

"The problem with lying, Squire, is that if you do it once, people are less likely to believe you a second or third time," observed Wyldon dispassionately. "Honor and trust are as near to irreplaceable as anything can be."

"I'm sorry," Owen repeated in a whisper, cursing himself for being incapable of devising a wittier reply. After all, sorry was a lame word, since it changed nothing.

"Mithros, boy, look at me." Instinctively, Owen's head jerked upright at the sharpness in his knightmaster's tone. "There are precious few dilemmas to which a legitimate solution is to examine the dirt and to mumble at it. This isn't among them. Now, you can call me a gullible fool, but I'm willing to believe you this time. However, be advised that I will be less lenient if you do anything like this again. Speaking of that, if you ever want to progress in your relationship with my daughter, I expect you to discuss it with me first. If your intentions with her are honorable, then you can share them with me beforehand."

"So, I can still write to her?" Owen pressed eagerly, since he had been nervous that this privilege would be revoked as soon as Wyldon recovered from his remorse at breaking his squire's ankle.

"Yes, you _may _write to her," Wyldon affirmed, stressing the grammatically correct verb. "That is, you may if you abide by certain conditions."

"Oh?" Owen's enthusiasm waned somewhat despite his reminding himself that being able to write to Margary under any terms, however strident, was leagues better than not being allowed to correspond with her at all.

"Specifically, all letters will be sent and received through me, so that I can guarantee that they are appropriate," elaborated Lord Wyldon. "Be warned, Jesslaw, that I am not a priestess who has no knowledge of the pleasures of the flesh. Thus, I do comprehend what birds, bees, and flowers are symbols of."

"What do you mean, my lord?" asked Owen, finally pulling the epistle out of his pocket.

"Read the note." Wyldon jabbed his finger at the parchment in his squire's hand. "You'll see what I mean."

"You don't know how weird it is, sir, that you've read something addressed to me before I did," grumbled Owen.

"Get used to it." Wyldon shrugged indifferently. "Anyway, it's not as odd as my having to write to the head priestess to explain to her that birds, bees, and flowers are not merely innocuous, modest references to beautiful elements of nature that appear in the spring."

Aware that it would be foolish to respond to this assertion, Owen squinted down at his letter and began to decipher the note that Margary had sent him:

_Dear Squire Owen (and any priestesses who are kindly ignoring my right to privacy to shield my most valuable commodity, my chastity), _

_I hope this letter finds you well. For someone who is a squire to my father, that basically translates into being in less than a hundred pieces. I'm sorry about the demanding practices Father is putting you through. _

_Since nothing suits a lady more than compassion, I have decided to sew and embroider you a handkerchief during our needlework lessons at the convent. My fingers, which bled frequently from pokes with needles throughout this arduous task, hope that you will appreciate it, even though my humility insists that you could find a better one almost anywhere. My maidenly modesty prevents me from imagining that you would treasure it out of a sentimental attachment to the one who wove a splotch of color into her gray environment, and then, displaying appropriate maidenly selflessness, gave it to you. _

_I embroidered the robins to remind you of the joys of spring even when it is no longer here. I pray that the robins will encourage you to ruminate upon the splendors of spring, including the birds and the bees and all the flowers that are out there, waiting to be plucked. Possibly, while you are contemplating the marvels of spring, you will discover that you have one rose that you favor more than any other. _

_More practically, you may wear this as a token of my chaste favor when you joust against my father. Everyone is always declaring that a woman's handkerchief brings a knight good luck. I suspect that the same holds true for squires who bear the tokens of pure affection from young ladies of fine breeding. _

_Although I am not generally one to credit such superstitions, Squire Owen, I think a handkerchief in which every strand was woven with the idea of protecting the wearer in mind might really function. After all, Father always carries one of Mother's handkerchiefs under his armor when he tilts in the lists or fights in a war. He's survived much in battle and hasn't lost a joust in anyone's memory, so if a handkerchief is such a potent talisman for him, why can't one protect you, too? _

_Mother always told my sisters and I that the tears of concern she sheds over Father's wellbeing as she creates her handkerchief is what renders it so mighty. Well, I've surpassed her, since I've poured not only tears into this handkerchief. (Don't flatter yourself by envisioning that I was weeping for you, though, as everyone knows that it is disreputable for a lady, however compassionate, to sob over a man that isn't a relation, her betrothed, or her husband. No, I was wailing from the needle pricks.) Apart from the tears, I've dropped at least a wash basin of sweat and blood on it as a result of needle mishaps and the stress of making a handkerchief that is attractive. After all, it's one of my purposes in life to bring beauty into the world of men. I can do so best in a gray convent until a knight, who is hopefully more handsome than the rest, comes riding up to rescue me from my current position. _

_I hope that will transpire soon. I want to be able to move into a more colorful castle with better tapestries on the wall where I can sew, embroider, and oversee the household accounts of my theoretical dear husband. I can also fulfill my ultimate purpose, which is to ensure that my husband's lineage goes on. This must happen soon, because looks and youth fade quickly. After that, I will be an old shrew, whom nobody will desire to wed._

_While I wait for my handsome knight to rescue his virtuous damsel in distress, I learn how to manage his manor. I also pray to the Goddess for the patience to see through all my chores, the senility to forget the beings I never liked, the good fortune to run into the ones I do, and the eyesight to tell the difference. _

_I had better go, for the young lady, Rosalynn, with whom I share my bedchamber is begging me to remove the mask of exotic fruit the Yamani gentlewomen who visited our convent state will prevent outbreaks of pimples. It is hard for men to comprehend the effort it requires to be a peerless epitome of loveliness in a repulsive world, since a man's idea of making himself presentable entails throwing on a less filthy set of clothing and washing the horse stench off him. Therefore, I want you to know that you should have nothing but admiration for Rosalynn. She devotes just about every hour of her existence that she is not sleeping to enhancing her already considerable beauty. _

_Why she does so is beyond me, though. After all, she is the youngest (and prettiest) of five sisters of a poorer noble family. Thus, it is doubtful that her parents will be able to dower all five girls. As such, it is not probable that she will wed, since a younger sister may only be married off after the elder ones are dispensed of. If I were her, I would have taken the vows of the priestesses by now, but Rosalynn is not the sharpest knife in the drawer, which essentially means that she is as intelligent as a spade. That's why she still believes that she will marry, and that is why she endeavors to make herself more attractive for men who never come calling at the convent. If she saw me write this, she would accuse me of jealousy, and she'd be right. I am envious. Nothing is better for a woman than to be a pretty, delicate imbecile, except to be a rich, pretty, and delicate imbecile. _

_Goddess, she's really bawling at me now. I'd better go before she snatches letter, sees it is addressed to you, and begins to make my life miserable by gossiping about my perfectly pure relationship with you. I'll close for now, because after I aid Rosalynn, it will be time for bed. _

_If I'm caught up after lights-out, I will be sentenced to a week of assisting the laundrywomen. Forgive me my lack of industriousness, Squire Owen, by recollecting that us females are weaker than men into both spiritual and physical senses, but I detest doing everybody's laundry. Thus, I don't wish to be caught up after lights-out. Besides, I do really need my beauty sleep. _

_May Mithros shield you from Father's lance, _

_Margary_

_P.S. The courier I usually bribe to covertly transfer my letters to you and your replies back to me has had the audacity to contract some sort of flu that prevents him from riding as usual. This is a real pain, because it ruins my normal method of communicating with you. (For the egocentricity of that notion, I will bake him some biscuits that he won't promptly vomit back up. Oh, who am I kidding? I can't cook. I'll ask that my friend Cassia do it. She can concoct anything culinary.) Anyway, since our usual messenger is ill, I bribed one of his buddies to do the job. Hopefully, he is trustworthy. _

"The handkerchief came too late, for harm has already come and inflicted its damage on me," griped Owen, folding up the epistle, "and the messenger wasn't trustworthy."

"Of course the courier wasn't reliable," Wyldon pronounced, shaking his head at the folly of younger man's remark. "Anyone who is able to be bribed is not trustworthy, and you would do well to remember that. If you have to purchase someone's allegiance you don't have their fidelity― gold does. They will take your money, but only complete the task they are hired for if it suits them. The first one you two bribed didn't give away your secret, because he knew that if he kept it, he could collect more money for the stealthy messages. However, the second one realized that he only had a one-time job. Therefore, it made sense to him to offer the father an opportunity to buy the letter first."

"You can't trust anyone in this world," complained Owen, shaking his head ruefully.

"I want you to be aware that I spot the irony of you bemoaning other people's untrustworthiness when you and my daughter conspired against me," Lord Wyldon educated him curtly.

At this point, he determined that it was time to clamp his mouth shut. There was no profit to be gained in pushing the man now, and Margary was on the line if he did. Whatever occurred, he couldn't bear to lose her.


	9. Chapter 9

Excitement

Finally, it was dusk. That meant that a long day of carrying messages and performing other endless and dull tasks for his knightmaster was over at last, as far as Owen was concerned. For the umpteenth time since he had arrived at Fort Steadfast two days ago, he wished fervently that Lord Wyldon had not been assigned command here. Instead, he wished that Wyldon had been allowed to remain at Northwatch with Vanget. Then, Owen and Wyldon could have hunted down Scanran raiding parties, rather than being cooped up here, collecting dust and performing the myriad useless little behind-the-curtain rituals that an army apparently needed done in order to function.

Well, he consoled himself as he plopped onto a splintering oak bench beside the mess hall, at least he had a letter from Margary to cheer him. As he reminded himself of this fact, he slipped a hand into the pocket of his breeches. Like he always did, he brought the note she had sent to him to his nose and inhaled deeply.

Even though the seal had been slit where Wyldon had opened the epistle to ascertain that its contents were somewhat appropriate, the parchment still had a whiff of rosewater upon it. As pathetic as it sounded, he was starting to regard that smell as one of the brightest portions of his days. It wasn't so much the aroma, he mused, as what the odor symbolized. It was the smell of Margary, and her letters had yet to fail to bring a smile to his lips. All he knew was that he had determined what flower he would pick if he was able to, although he had refrained from establishing as much in his replies to her. After all, he didn't want to be decapitated by Wyldon.

Grinning at the mere mental image of Margary, he squinted down at the parchment and began to decipher her epistle in the waning sunlight:

_Dear Squire Owen (and my noble protectors, who are too numerous to list by name without creating a comically long salutation like this one), _

_I trust that by now you have safely arrived at Fort Northwatch, unless Mithros is far crueler than a properly shielded and delicate young maiden such as myself can possibly fathom. From there, I hope that you receive the excitement that you stated that you so ardently desired in your latest correspondence with me. At any rate, I hope that your life is more exciting than mine is. _

_Re-reading my previous sentence, Squire Owen, I perceive how it might be misconstrued as a shrewish complaint or an unladylike wish for adventure. In the interest of preserving my invaluable reputation as well as that of this esteemed convent, please let me assure you that this is not the case. My small female brain finds more than enough excitement in my daily routine, and my inability to express my contentment with my present situation was nothing more than another display of feminine mental frailty._

_I promise you, though, that I could handle no more excitement than today's finger-pricking sewing and embroidery, ear-shattering music lessons, and feet-smashing dance instruction. In fact, I suspect that I shall faint if Rosalynn requests that I iron out her already straight hair this evening. _

Owen was about to read Margary's concluding paragraph when someone shook his shoulder. Irritated at the intrusion upon his brief respite, Owen glanced up at the soldier who had jostled him.

"What?" he inquired more tersely than he otherwise would have done. The fact that his muscles were sore and his bones weaker than a newborn calf's did not contribute to his agreeableness.

"Don't be botherin' him, Tristan," grunted a burly man-at-arms who stood behind him. "Can't ye see that he is of noble stock and is much too good to be minglin' with us common folk?"

However, the soldier named Tristan ignored his comrade and kept his hazel eyes riveted on Owen's, as he asked, "Would ye be willin' to help us move the food sacks into the kitchens?"

While he posed this question, he pointed his finger at a wagonload of rucksacks of victuals that had rolled into the bastion after the courier that had carried Owen's letter. Since he had been preoccupied with Margary's note, Owen hadn't truly noticed it until now, however.

As Owen swiveled his head slightly to look at the bags of food, Tristan jabbed his finger at the doorway beside the mess hall entrance that led into the kitchens, where the sweaty cooks were toiling away, creating revolting meals for people who only ate the food because there was no other source of sustenance available. Clearly, Tristan was striving to illustrate the process of picking up the supply sacks and lugging them into the kitchens.

Owen was about to offer a weary assent, because everyone had to work in the army, after all, when, once again, the other more hostile and more muscular soldier intervened, "Don't be ridiculous. He's too important to lower himself by helpin' us. Try to act like Mithros gave ye the sense he gave a duck, Tristan."

"In the army, everybody does what needs to be done, Quinton," retorted Tristan. Before Tristan could snap back, he pressed Owen, "So, what do ye say, squire?"

"I'll help you," Owen confirmed, shoving Margary's letter into his pocket and rising.

"Are ye sure ye can do it?" demanded Quinton, his voice scathing. "Most pampered nobles wouldn't be able to pick up such heavy stuff if their lives depended upon it."

"You're a great one to talk," remarked Owen tightly, halting in the middle of stooping to grab a sack, straightening his spine, and locking his gray eyes on the man's snapping green ones. Dimly, Owen noted how similar the shade of the other's eyes was to Neal's, but Neal's eyes weren't so hard, or, at least, they weren't when he gazed at Owen. "Yet I haven't seen you do anything."

"Are ye implyin' that I don't know how to pick up a supply sack?" snarled Quinton, his eyes narrowing menacingly.

"I'm saying that you should prove that you can do something before you talk like that," answered Owen through a clenched jaw.

"Now, don't ye be actin' as if ye have a clue what ye are talkin' about," Quinton growled. At this juncture, Tristan threw a restraining arm on his wrist to hush him, but he twisted away, plowing on, "Ye will only embarrass yerself. After all, it's obvious that ye have always relied on yer mama to do everything for ye."

The blood that had been pounding ever more resoundingly in Owen's eardrums reached a mighty crescendo. How dare this rough, unlettered man mention his mother? How dare he refer to her when she had been murdered by bandits and so hadn't been able to do anything for her son in years? Nobody discussed Owen's mother in that manner and got away with it.

"At least I know who my mother is," he fired back.

Apparently, he wasn't the only one who was sensitive to insults about his mother, for, barely a second later, a massive palm slapped into his right cheek. For a fraction of a second, he could do no more than gasp in astonishment. Quinton was brawnier than a warhorse, and his blow had hurt more than a kick from Jolly's hooves would have. Fortunately, at that time, adrenaline seized control of his body as he slipped into battle mode. Now, he was just doing whatever it entailed to defend himself. In practical terms, this translated into ducking the second smack that Quinton aimed at his head and hurling his own punch at his foe's mouth.

His fist connected solidly with its target. Reflexively, he yanked his hand back to assail his opponent again, but found his wrist imprisoned in an ironclad grip in mid-motion. Gritting his teeth, he turned his wrist swiftly to the left, where his enemy's thumb alone, rather than four fingers, clutched him, which was an area of weakness for most beings.

Then, heeding the directions of the Shang warriors who had instructed him, he tugged downward. The maneuver was successful, since he managed to extricate himself from his adversary's grasp.

As he dodged the punches lobbed at him and strove to ensure that the ones he couldn't evade landed on insensitive and uncritical regions of his body, he launched his own barrage of punches upon Quinton. The maw of battle consumed him whole, and he was so focused on victory that he didn't realize that a crowd was forming outside the mess hall to gawk at the brawl that was enfolding.

In fact, he only returned to reality with a bump when a frigid voice barked, "Cease this nonsense at once!"

Even with the blood roaring almost deafeningly in his ears, Owen recognized the speaker. After all, only one being issued commands with such cold confidence that they would be complied with immediately, and that person was Lord Wyldon of Cavall.

Instantly, Owen froze, not even bothering to lower his fists. Glancing at his knightmaster, whose face was pale with fury, it dawned on him for the first time what a spectacle he and Quinton had been, and he steeled himself to hear the full brunt of Wyldon's wrath.

For a moment that contained centuries, Lord Wyldon's stern eyes scrutinized him and Quinton, as everyone who had assembled to watch the fight stared at the damage each of the participants had wrought on each other.

Examining himself for the first time along with everybody else, Owen spotted that he had scratches and bruises lining his arms. His left knee was throbbing where it had been walloped. What felt like an egg was forming on his forehead. It was difficult for him to breathe, too, as his ribs felt like they had been broken in seven locations. As such notions occurred to him abruptly, he discovered that a metallic taste was flooding his mouth. Tentatively, he extended a hand upward and touched his face. Under his nose, it made contact with a stream of blood.

The cuts that he had not realized until now that marred his knuckles protested shrilly in his mind as he fumbled around inside his pocket. As he withdrew a handkerchief and swiped the warm blood off his face, he studied the harm he had inflicted upon his foe. Satisfaction lanced through him like lightning in a midsummer thunderstorm when he saw that a scarlet river was flowing from Quinton's fat lower lip and rainbows encircled each of the man's eyes.

Seeing what he had done, adrenaline spiked through him once again, and he was no longer afraid of what punishment Lord Wyldon would dole out. Whatever it was, it would be a price worth paying, because he had drawn blood from an arrogant imbecile.

"You two are a disgrace to warriors everywhere." When Wyldon proclaimed as much, Owen cringed and decided that he couldn't deal with whatever he was sentenced to, after all. "Unlike the Scanrans, you were both taught military discipline, so don't humiliate your country by letting them best you in it. Regardless of how you feel about each other, you will cooperate, because you are both serving something larger than yourselves here. Service comes first when you are under my command. You are on the same side, so use your common sense and don't make the Scanrans' job easier by beating each other up for them. You may despise one another, but in a combat situation, I expect you to be willing to lay your lives down for each other if necessary. Now, to show you two how to work together no matter how much you loathe each other's guts and to punish you for this unruly demonstration, you will stand guard together on the second watch every night for a week."

"But, my lord, I have the first watch this week," protested Quinton with far less belligerence than he had employed when he had addressed Owen, although the glower he directed at Owen compensated for this. "That's what I was assigned."

"Assignments can be changed," Wyldon declared, unperturbed. "That's what clerks are for. I will inform them of the alteration in your schedule, and they will switch your watch with someone else's."

"Very well, my lord," mumbled Quinton.

"Now that we've settled that, I suggest that you both get something to eat before your watch." Here, Wyldon focused solely on Owen and added, "As for you, Jesslaw, when you are finished with your watch, report to my office. I wish to discuss this matter in greater detail with you, and I shall still be awake."

"Yes, sir," Owen agreed to this with even less enthusiasm than Quinton had shown. Inwardly, he complained that it wasn't fair that he was going to receive a second lecture from Lord Wyldon about this fight when his enemy was only getting one. This was definitely a case of less being better than more.

Besides, it was inhumane to scold someone after they had been on guard duty for four hours. It was vicious to chide someone at two in the morning in general when precious few people had any semblance of wit about them. Maybe that's what his knightmaster wanted, though. Perhaps he wanted Owen to be hollow, so that he would be an empty vessel that could be filled with instruction.

As this idea entered his head, Owen scowled. He suspected that no one could ever comprehend Wyldon's teaching methods, unless they became as crazy as his knightmaster was. Anyway, that wasn't his concern now. It was time for him to worry about feeding himself so that he wouldn't be plagued by a growling stomach as well as eyes that desired nothing more than to close for the night while he was on guard duty.

As he joined the mass of soldiers heading into the mess hall for supper, he thought that he had gotten his excitement, and he almost would have preferred a boring day like the ones Margary suffered through at the convent.


	10. Chapter 10

On Guard

In Owen's opinion, if there were anything in the world worse than standing guard with a man whose innards he despised, he had never encountered it. It was awful enough pacing over the same battlements, checking the ground outside the fortress every step of the way without having Quinton for company.

With anyone else, he could have struck up a conversation, but with the burly and surly soldier beside him such a course of action would doubtlessly result in another brawl. That wouldn't have been so terrible if Owen hadn't surmised that Wyldon would hang both him and Quinton if they managed to entangle themselves in another fistfight tonight. More accurately, if they were lucky, they would be hung. If they weren't, they would probably be drawn and quartered.

"Ye know standin' guard with ye for a week is gonna be a real drag if ye won't talk to me at all." To Owen's surprise, it was Quinton who shattered the steady pounding of their boots upon the stone ramparts with this gruff assessment.

"There's no point in us trying to have a conversation, since the last time we exchanged two sentences, we came to blows," grunted Owen. "I'd rather not end up with another week's worth of guard duty with you, if it's all the same to you."

"We've gotten through more than two sentences now," Quinton remarked, shrugging his broad shoulders. "I suppose we did get off on the wrong foot this evening."

"You could say that," mumbled Owen. As he did so, he stared out at the area outside the bastion with more intensity than was necessary in an effort to avoid paying any more attention to the man beside him than was strictly required.

"That's all the more reason for us to be makin' amends, then," Quinton argued. "Now, since it seems like ye will be livin' in this fort for a good deal longer whether I approve or not, ye should realize that I have a bit of a temper, and some things send me over the edges faster than others."

"Let me guess: you are illiterate, so you were jealous when you spotted me reading a note." The instant the last word escaped from his lips, Owen nearly bashed his skull in. He stopped mid-motion only because Quinton would be doing so soon, so he might as well conserve the energy.

"I can't pretend that I'm a huge fan of noble children bein' shoved through the ranks just on account of their birth," retorted Quinton. As they passed by a torch, Owen could discern that his cheeks were twitching with ire as his entire face flushed crimson. "It's been my experience that most of 'em don't know their swords from their sheaths, although that doesn't prevent 'em from givin' out commands to more experienced soldiers and dispatchin' loads of better people to their deaths."

"Oh, so we've reached the heart of the matter." Now, Owen could feel his blood boiling. Heat flared in his cheeks, and he halted abruptly. Whirling upon Quinton, he growled, "Obviously, you hate me just because I am a noble. Well, here's an astonishing fact that will probably cause you to faint: I didn't choose which family I was born into any more than you did."

"That doesn't keep ye from takin' credit for it, though, does it?" Quinton snarled, a vein throbbing in his neck so frenetically that Owen feared it would explode from the pressure, showering him with the man's blood. How he hoped such an event wouldn't transpire. After all, he couldn't imagine anyone whose bodily fluid he would loathe to be coated in more than Quinton's.

"If you've any interest in not fighting with me again tonight, you'll stop making assumptions about me when what you know about me could fit into an acorn top with room to spare," snapped Owen, his hands balling. If Quinton responded with another insult, he would punch him all over his arrogant face. It was worth being hung to draw blood from those smug, leering lips.

"Assumptions can be accurate, though," hissed Quinton. "You assumed that my mother was a disreputable woman, and you were right."

"I―" Owen choked over the retort he had intended to utilize as Quinton's words rammed into his brain with the velocity of a massive stone shooting out of a catapult. For a few seconds, he could do no more than gawk at the other. Then, he stuttered, "Are you serious?"

"As serious as death," affirmed Quinton brusquely, but his manner did not trick Owen, who comprehended that the soldier's briskness was a method of shielding a vulnerable section of his heart. Too much terseness, just like too much flippancy, often cloaked much anguish, after all. "My dear mama was the local prostitute, or she was until the three babies she had after me destroyed her figure so much that she could no longer ply her trade, as no man would pay to have her anymore."

"Why didn't she use an amulet to protect herself from unwanted pregnancies?" Owen demanded, the words tumbling out of his mouth before he recognized how tactless they were.

"A whore in a poor farmin' village can hardly afford such luxuries," snorted Quinton. "Anyway, after she was no longer pretty enough to be a tart, she couldn't support herself, since nobody would hire her as a maid or anythin', because of who she had been. She and my siblings would have starved if I hadn't joined the army. With the money I earn, they can survive, albeit barely."

"I'm sorry about what I said," Owen announced after a pause in which the crackling of the flames in the torches they strode past echoed resoundingly in his ears. "I just meant it as a typical riposte to an insult about my mother."

"It doesn't matter." Quinton shook his head in a curt dismissal. "Well, now ye understand why I don't like it if anyone but me calls my mama a whore, especially if the person in question doesn't even know that she is one."

"I do." Owen's voice was barely more than a whisper as he gazed out at the mountainous ground he was supposed to be keeping vigil over. Now, he was more lost in contemplation of Quinton's story than watching for signs of enemy activity. Swallowing, he added, "Maybe now you'll understand why I reacted so violently to your comment about my mother because she is dead."

"Did she die in childbirth?" The look Quinton focused on him was less harsh than it had ever been, and his tone was, for a soldier, almost delicate.

"No, she was killed by bandits when I was five and my younger sisters were three and two," Owen replied. As it always did when he discussed this matter, his throat constricted so that it was challenging for him to breathe, and he was compelled to gulp down a lump that had formed therein. Don't cry, he barked at himself. After all, weeping was for weak people, and he couldn't be among them. No, he had to be strong, so he could avenge his mother.

"I guess both of our mamas are sensitive topics, then," murmured Quinton once they had traveled a few more feet in silence. "Perhaps we've more in common than I thought. Maybe I'll even come to like ye in the end. After all, I came to like Bevin, and, by the looks of it, ye are as bold and as stubborn as him."

"Who's Bevin?" inquired Owen, his forehead furrowing like a plowed field in curiosity.

"That's something you should ask Lord Wyldon when you see him later," Quinton answered with the swiftness of a man hiding information. "He's closer to Bevin than I."

"I doubt my lord will be in the mood to take such questions."

"He probably won't." Quinton conceded as much before switching the topic. "Now, tell me, who was it yer letter was from? Do ye have a sweetheart to wait for ye to return from war?"

The subject of women lasted them through the rest of their watch. In fact, before Owen knew it, two more hours had elapsed. Then, he was standing at attention before Lord Wyldon's desk, awaiting whatever lecture his knightmaster had devised for the occasion. Resisting the urge to yawn, Owen prayed that the scolding would not be a very protracted one, because he was practically asleep on his leaden feet.

"How was your watch?" Wyldon asked, laying down his quill, which he had been employing to write a report to General Vanget, and arching his eyebrows at his exhausted squire.

"It was quiet, my lord," Owen updated him automatically.

"I would have hoped that you or Quinton would have possessed the sense to ring an alarm if it hadn't," declared Wyldon dryly. "What I wished to hear was whether you and your companion refrained from murdering each other while you were on duty."

"We did, sir," Owen assured him, "and we made amends."

"I hope that you don't envision that I will reduce your punishment because of that," commented Lord Wyldon, his dark eyes contracting with suspicion.

"No, my lord." Hastily, Owen shook his head in negation of the notion. It was no falsehood, anyway, because he had learned years ago that lenient characterized Wyldon about as effectively as soft described a boulder.

"Good, because you don't deserve such treatment," his knightmaster pronounced, his features grimmer than usual. "You are no longer a child, Jesslaw. Therefore, it is expected that you will display some class. Nobles may not engage in fistfights with commoners. To do so upends the whole structure around which this country is built. Simply phrased, nobles outrank commoners, and every noble's authority is undermined when one rolls around in the mud like a commoner. Similarly, commoners get confused about what exactly is their station in society when nobles behave exactly like them. That's why, however friendly you become with some of them, you must remain partly aloof. You must not permit them to imagine that they are your equals, which entails not losing your temper like you did around them. Remember that a loss of control is the equivalent of a loss of power and that keeping your calm will sometimes mean the difference between life and death."

"It's hard not to lose your temper when someone taunts your about your mother, sir," interjected Owen bitterly. At that moment, he was furious enough not to care how much more trouble he landed himself in as a result of this interruption.

"Everyone insults someone's mother if they are seeking a forceful response from that individual. That is why you must not give it to them. No, you must maintain your dignity. If you must fight a noble, do so in a respectable manner through the lists, but never have a fistfight with a commoner, for that will convince them that you are on the same level as them," Wyldon countered. "Yes, it's difficult to maintain composure when someone you love is derided, but if you can do so, people will admire your self-control. After all, not everyone goes flying off the handle just because their mother is mocked."

"Not everybody's mother is dead, either," scoffed Owen. "Not everyone's mother has been slaughtered by bandits. If that happened to your mother, you'd defend her, too."

"Don't address me in that tone, Squire." There was less of a menace in Wyldon's voice as he issued this warning than was typical with him. Before Owen could respond, he sighed and went on, "Anyway, your mother wouldn't have wished to discover you brawling like that, especially in her name."

"You knew my mother?" Owen gaped at his knightmaster. Eagerness raced through him. Since his father refused to mention her, all that Owen knew about her came from his uncle, and, because his uncle had been compelled to discuss the woman only when Owen's father wasn't around to object, he knew less about her than did about advanced mathematics. Thus, he was lured in by the prospect of learning more about her.

"At court, everyone is familiar with one another to some degree, even if it is only through gossip or brief sightings at feasts," Wyldon educated him. "I was only acquainted with your mother peripherally, but I do recall that she had gray eyes like yours. She was also soft-spoken and poised. Disorder and disharmony were two things that she did not seem to approve of."

"Oh." Owen battled to conceal his disappointment. His uncle had already told him that much and that his mother possessed a beautiful, lilting voice that could have soothed even a giant into a deep slumber.

An awkward pause ensued, in which Owen could have sworn that he heard his heart thumping away inside him. Then, Wyldon waved a hand to dismiss him, stating, "That's all I've got to say to you now. Get to bed. You could benefit from some rest before dawn arrives."

"Yes, sir," Owen agreed softly, pivoting and walking toward the door. He had reached it and was about to exit when he spun about to regard his knightmaster again, recollecting the inquiry ha had been storing in the back of his mind since his exchange with Quinton. "May I ask you a question?"

"Since you used 'may' instead of 'can,' you may ask, although I reserve the right to refuse you an answer," Wyldon stipulated crisply.

"Who's Bevin?" demanded Owen immediately.

"Someone with a very common name for a male born not far from the Tusaine border," was all Wyldon offered in reply.

"Quinton knows him, and so do you, my lord," Owen pressed.

"Quinton has as oversized a mouth as you do, and one day it will land him in a mound of droppings, just as yours will toss you into one," glowered Wyldon. "What did he tell you about this Bevin, anyhow?"

"Only that he liked Bevin and that you were better acquainted with this Bevin, sir," Owen explained, his eyes riveted on the other's face.

"The only Bevin I am truly familiar with is a knight on border patrol near Tusaine," established his knightmaster, his expression tautening. "However, he and I haven't been in contact with each other in years."

Owen waited, but his mentor didn't seem inclined to reveal anything else, a hypothesis that was confirmed when the older man declared, "That's all you need to hear and more. Now, return to your bedchamber and get some sleep. You'll certainly require it."

"But―" Owen protested, wanting to learn more about this mysterious Bevin.

"No buts," Wyldon overrode him. "What did I say?"

"You ordered me to return to my bedroom and get some sleep" echoed Owen, who was at his most sulky.

"I see that you understand me perfectly, then, so there is no excuse for disobedience. Do as you were instructed," Lord Wyldon directed icily.

"You're not fair at all," Owen scowled.

"Would you care to repeat that, Jesslaw?" Wyldon's tone dropped another ten degrees.

His initial impulse, born of survival instincts, was to insist that he had mumbled only some acquiescence or other. Yet, that was a coward's solution, and he was no coward. Besides, that would be lying, and he would speak the complete, unadorned truth as he perceived it. Bracing himself for a demonstration of Wyldon's wrath, which could most likely send any hardened warrior to his knees, he reiterated, "I said 'you're not fair at all.'"

"I presume that you have a specific grievance, rather than a general complaint about my character, to file with me," commented Lord Wyldon, his tone drier than a desert in midsummer, and his eyebrows arched testily.

This was enough of an opening for his squire to plunge on, "You yelled at me earlier for not telling you the complete truth, and then you lied to me about whoever this Bevin person is. That's not fair."

"I think you may have misunderstood me," observed Wyldon in a clipped fashion. "Honesty is important, yes, but that doesn't mean one has to tell the entire truth all the time."

"You told me that was lying earlier, sir." Owen couldn't keep the accusing edge out of his voice. "Changing the definition of lying whenever it suits you isn't just."

"Squire, it's late, and I'm not in the mood to deal with your impudence," snapped Lord Wyldon, his eyes blazing as he jabbed a trembling finger at the door of his study. "If you don't want latrine duty for a week, too, you'll leave right now. There's the door. Go and shut the door after you."

Deciding that if he had latrine duty on top of basically a night of guard duty every day for a week, he would never have time to eat or sleep, Owen elected to drop the bone of contention. To block any further arguments from spilling out of his mouth, he bowed slightly and stalked out of the room, his anger rivaling his knightmaster's. As he stormed back to his bedchamber, Owen promised himself that one day he would have an expression as intimidating as Wyldon's, because then he could emerge the victor from clashes like the one he had just lost.


	11. Chapter 11

Secrets and Rifts

The next morning as the sun rose, Owen lay motionless on his mattress. It seemed like a tremendous bother to stumble out of bed, throw on his clothing, and head down to the mess hall for breakfast. Perhaps he should just roll over and skip breakfast in exchange for an extra hour of sleep, assuming, of course, that the rolling over did not require too much effort.

After a moment's groggy reflection, however, he determined that he needed the energy provided by breakfast to much to skip it in exchange for one paltry hour of slumber.

Shielding his eyes from the sunlight streaming into his room, Owen pulled himself out of bed, tossed on his shirt and breeches with his mind still asleep, and lumbered down to the mess hall, his eyelids, as heavy as boulders, yearning to close.

When he arrived in the mess hall, a whirlwind of sounds and smells deluged him instantaneously. Feeling somewhat more awake as the babble of gossip and good-natured taunting crashed on his ears from all directions, Owen joined the line waiting for the morning meal.

As the queue inched forward, rivaling molasses for sheer slowness, the food he was expected to consume gradually came into view. The sight of runny eggs that probably had never been in contact with a chicken and watery porridge killed his appetite. As a result, he contemplated returning to his bed for about forty-five minutes of sleep instead of breakfast.

However, he decided against this scheme when he realized that he was already too awake to drift off into slumber again. In fact, if he tried to fall asleep again, he'd probably finally do so just when he should be getting up and going about his duties. Besides, it was too late for him to escape the mess hall, for a kitchen girl was dumping a mound of the runny eggs on his platter.

Mumbling a thanks that he didn't feel, Owen shuffled forward again. This time, another serving girl plopped a ladle full of porridge from a massive cauldron into his bowl. Again, he grunted his appreciation, which was as lukewarm as the porridge.

When he stepped forward again, a third kitchen girl threw a bruised apple onto his plate and slammed a glass of milk that was about a day away from rancid onto his tray. With a nod of half-hearted gratitude, Owen spun around and confronted the biggest nightmare of mess hall dining, which, surprisingly, wasn't what one would eat, but, rather, whom one would eat with.

Staring out over the packed wooden tables that spanned the length of the gigantic room, Owen's stomach twisted. It was as if he had consumed putrid meat, but that wasn't possible. He hadn't even eaten yet. Besides, there wasn't anything even remotely recognizable as meat on his platter...

His musings were interrupted when a hand about the size of a spade waved at him from fifteen feet down the first table. Even from that distance, Quinton's voice was audible as he hollered, "Hey, me watch buddy, come sit with us!"

Grinning, because now he didn't have to wander from table to table, asking if he could sit anywhere he spotted a vacant portion of bench, Owen strode over to Quinton and settled himself beside Quinton and across from Tristan. From the appearance of it, Quinton was a popular soldier, for he was surrounded by a group of particularly boisterous men. Once Owen had seated himself, Quinton performed the introductions by flapping his hand in Owen's direction, announcing, "Everyone, this be Squire Owen of Jesslaw, but he prefers to be called Owen."

"Owen, ye already be knowin' Tristan," continued Quinton, "but ye haven't met Cameron Addison." He gestured at a man with russet hair and a crooked nose, who bobbed his head in a greeting. "Ye haven't met Dustin Brant, neither." This time, Quinton indicated a muscular man with light brown hair and matching eyes. "Nor do ye know Garret Fuller, the man responsible for this feast."

"Partly responsible, ye mean," corrected Cameron through his bent nose.

Before Quinton could answer, Garret, hurling down the fork he was nibbling through his eggs with, snapped, "Shut up, both of ye, or I'll cut out yer tongues and eat 'em, instead. It ain't my fault that I had kitchen duty last night. I ain't the one who created the meal. I just mixed the porridge and cracked the eggs like they told me, just as ye all do when ye have kitchen duty. I ain't responsible for nothin', and the food tastes every bit as bad when ye all prepare it."

"We weren't blamin' ye, not really," cut in Dustin placatingly, spooning steaming porridge into his mouth. "Ye'd have to be a genius to devise food this awful, and, if there's one thing ye ain't, it's a genius."

Nearly gagging on his flavorless porridge, Owen shook his head and remarked, "I can't believe they actually prepare the food they serve here. To be honest, I assumed they just pulled it out of the trash."

"As do many newbies," chortled Quinton, spearing his last piece of liquidy egg. "No, though, our food comes from nearby villages. The occupants send the worst of their produce to the army, which pays through its nose for the worst cuts of meat and the most wilted vegetables, since none of the quartermasters have a clue how to bargain their way out of a sack. However, I suppose that we oughta be grateful."

"Grateful?" Owen stuttered, almost spraying porridge across the table in his astonishment. "What should we be grateful for-- the fact that we shan't become fat because nobody could possibly like this food enough to become overweight off it?"

"Well, there is that," commented Quinton sagely, "but I was actually thinkin' that we're lucky we ain't Scanrans."

"Aye, rumor has it that their rations are even more nauseating than ours," Dustin elaborated.

"What could possibly be worse than this?" Owen demanded dubiously, pushing away his empty porridge bowl and taking a tentative bite of the gooey eggs he had been furnished with. His scowl deepened when he discovered that the eggs were even more revolting than the porridge. Mithros, at least the porridge had been flavorless, unlike the eggs. "Do Scanran troops eat grass or something?"

"Oh, aye, they be a bunch of cows, gobbling up grass like there's no tomorrow," observed Tristan, smirking.

"Don't be a stupid southerner," Cameron scoffed. "Cows ain't raised up here. They'd end up rollin' down the mountains. It's sheep that be raised up here."

"Like ye'd know," retorted Tristan. "Bein' the son of a carpenter, ye wouldn't know the difference between a cow and a sheep if they both trampled over ye."

As Cameron opened his mouth to respond to this challenge, Quinton interjected, "Come on. We've got fifteen minutes for some light exercise left before we have to go about our business if we hurry outside now." While Garret, Tristan, Cameron, and Dustin gathered their dishes and trays to carry to the kitchen staff for cleaning, Quinton added to Owen, "Ye can accompany us if ye want."

"I'll come," Owen agreed, snatching up his dishes and tray as he rose. As he returned the tray, platter, bowl, and glass to the kitchen, Owen bit into his apple. However, he rapidly lost all interest in consuming it when he saw a worm crawling around in it. Resisting the urge to vomit, he tossed the apple into the trash and exited the mess hall with the five soldiers.

"Ye should eat the worms when you find 'em," Quinton advised him as they stepped outside. "They contain nutrients that help build muscles, I've heard."

"The healers told me that I shouldn't eat worms, since they could plant themselves in my stomach," argued Owen as they found an empty spot in the courtyard and began doing sit-ups. "Then, they would consume all the food that I would eat, and I would end up perishing of starvation or something like that."

"Aye, and the healers a hundred years ago used to think bleedin' people was a brilliant cure for everythin', when it just turns out that bleedin' someone tends to increase their odds of dyin' thanks to blood loss." Quinton rolled his eyes at Owen's lurid description of what damage healers stated worms could inflict on a body.

"Well, even if what the healers say is false, I still can only stomach so much mess hall food at a time." As he established as much, Owen decided that it was an impeccable time to change the subject, so he added, "By the way, Quinton, I asked Lord Wyldon about Bevin."

"Did ye now, and what did he tell ye?" Quinton arched an eyebrow at the younger man.

"Just that Bevin was a knight on border patrol near Tusaine and that they hadn't been in touch with one another for years," glowered Owen, expressing his dissatisfaction with Wyldon's reticence. "Now everything is as clear as swamp water."

"Did someone say somethin' about Bevin?" asked Garret, who had apparently been so focused on his exercises that Bevin's name had only just penetrated him. "Bevin was Wyldon's squire before the Immortals War, wasn't he?"

"Aye, he was," Quinton confirmed.

"So why didn't Wyldon want to discuss him?" frowned Owen. "I understand not being in contact with a former student, but why the secrecy?"

"Well, I've heard that somethin' of a rift sprang up between the two of them," Cameron remarked, switching from sit-ups to push-ups.

"Oh, aye, just after Bevin was knighted― this was still before the Immortals War, mind ye― he was assigned to patrol the Scanran border under Wyldon's command," contributed Quinton, his eyes somber as he started doing push-ups, as well. "Now, as ye all know, life up here can be a bit on the dull side, especially if there is no real action goin' on between us and our northern brethren. Well, in such circumstances, I suppose that it's only natural for a young knight to do a little more drinkin' than he should do, and I reckon that tendency is heightened in someone who craves adventure as much as Bevin did. I guess, then, that it's no real shock that one night when he was stumblin' back to his room after drinkin' in a friend's chamber, he fell down. Rumor has it that he twisted his ankle, but he didn't want to go to the healers, since that would be confessin' that he had gotten inebriated when nobody in the army is supposed to get intoxicated, so he just went back to his room and bandaged himself up. Everythin' probably would have been fine if the Scanrans hadn't chosen the next morning to attack him and the squad he was with while they were ridin' patrol. He was unhorsed, and that twisted ankle of his swiftly became a broken one. Scanrans ain't famed for their mercy, and one of 'em took advantage of the chance to chop off his leg. He might have died there if one of our soldiers hadn't dragged him aside and staunched the bleeding. By that time, reinforcements had arrived, and Bevin was able to be transported back to the fort for treatment."

Owen was so riveted by this story that he froze in the middle of a sit-up and just gaped at Quinton. When Quinton was done speaking, Owen recalled how pale his knightmaster had become when he had discovered that his squire's ankle was broken. At the time, he hadn't comprehended what had disconcerted the man so much, and, later on, he had assumed that Wyldon just hadn't been comfortable with the idea of losing control enough to actually injure a charge.

Now, he recognized that it was even more than that. Wyldon had been undergoing déjà vu. He had seen what severe consequences a broken ankle could have, and he was watching history repeat itself, hopeless to halt it. Still, why would a severed leg cause a gulf to develop between Bevin and Wyldon? That didn't make sense. Owen was still missing a piece of the jigsaw.

When he shared his bafflement with Quinton, the man replied gravely, "Owen, ye be young, and ye don't fully comprehend the blackness that resides in the hearts of most people yet. Ye don't know how guilt for one's own foolish mistakes can devour a man and make him desperate to blame any man but himself for his failings. Bevin was poised to be the next big thing at the time, and he's one of this country's greatest could-have-beens, if ye ask me. He was brave, funny, strong willed, and excellent at thinkin' on his feet. The soldiers loved him, and so did the nobles. He knew that he would rise to a position of power in the country, but suddenly that bright future was stripped away from him. After all, how could he really do any fighting if he had a peg leg? I'm sure it occurred to him that if he had gotten properly attended to when his ankle was just twisted, he would not have been crippled and his dreams could have come true. I'm sure it entered his mind that it was fear of what his kngihtmaster would say or do that kept him away from the healers that night. As for Wyldon, I'll wager that he was furious at his former squire for messin' up like that. With him, failure isn't just not an option― it ain't even a concept, and Bevin botched just about everything he could. Getting' wasted was a bad enough decision, but then not goin' to the healers and ridin' out on patrol with a twisted ankle was just foolish."

"You're wrong, Quinton," Cameron corrected his fellow soldier before Owen could truly absorb any of this. "The gulf didn't develop between them at that point. I suppose that Wyldon felt that he was responsible for Bevin's not seekin' a healer, and that he wanted to make it up to the young man, so he offered him his oldest daughter's hand in marriage."

Here, Owen gasped in horror. No, surely not. Bevin couldn't have beaten Anwen. When he was listening to Quinton explain the misfortune that had befallen the knight, Owen had sympathized with him, but Owen could never feel sorry for someone who was cruel to women and who abused his own wife. Owen must have misinterpreted something, but that didn't seem to be the case, because Cameron was going on, "Anyway, I heard that the marriage didn't go well, and, within a year, Bevin was divorced from Wyldon's daughter. After that, Wyldon would never speak with Bevin again."

"I don't blame Wyldon for not speaking to Bevin," mumbled Owen. "Bevin beat his daughter, after all."

"Bevin beat a woman?" Quinton echoed, stunned. "No, he can't have. He was much too kind for all that. He never abused the privileges of his bein' a noble or anything."

"Wyldon would be refusing to talk with his daughter, not with Bevin, if she and her husband had been divorced for no solid reason, so it makes sense that Bevin abused her," murmured Garret, who also appeared taken aback. "Besides, Quinton, people change and not always for the better. As you said, all of Bevin's great expectations fell flat on his face in one day. One morning he was on the fast track to success, and by evening, he was crippled and thrown off course to the land of simple border patrols on the least dangerous borders. That's got to be very borin' work for someone who is accustomed to the excitement of fightin' alongside Wyldon. As such, it's only natural that frustration and bitterness welled up inside him. Hittin' someone who probably won't smack back is a traditional, if reprehensible, method of relieving stress. Besides, it's logical that a disabled man would want to prove that he was stronger than someone."

"So he walloped his wife," Quinton spat. "If I ever see Bevin again, I'll show him what I think about men who bully their women. Maybe he'll realize that bein' hit is a lot less fun than doin' the whacking then, and perhaps it will occur to him that havin' the weak bein' preyed on by the strong is fine when ye be one of the strong, but it ain't so when ye're one of the weak. Sure, I could beat around a delicate lady who had just emerged from the convent, and I could steal candy from a baby, but what would be the point in that? Neither the lady nor the baby can defend themselves, so that ain't a challenge, and a fight should always be a challenge."

"Stealin' candy from a baby is harder than most people seem to believe," Garret reminded him.

"And some ladies would protect themselves with needles," commented Owen, envisioning Margarry's reaction if anyone tried to abuse her. "Still, I agree with you Quinton. It's the thought behind the action that counts. If a grown man picks on a woman or a baby, it's because he imagines that the person he's bullying can't hurt him back. That's just despicable."

"Aye, it makes all of us in the army look like a bunch of brutes," Quinton grunted, as the bell rang, announcing that breakfast hour was over, and everyone should be fulfilling their morning duties now.

As he shoved himself to his feet to go about his obligations, Owen wondered darkly if Bevin's mistreatment of Anwen would have a negative impact on what Wyldon would permit Owen to do with Margarry. After all, if Wyldon had felt that a squire had taken advantage of his trust once, he was hardly likely to allow such a thing to happen again. Yet, it wasn't fair that Owen shouldn't be able to progress in his relationship with Margarry just because Bevin had been a scumbag. Owen was nothing like Bevin, and he would never wound Margarry. Mithros, the notion of her being hurt at all made him feel sicker than all of breakfast combined had.


	12. Chapter 12

Author's Note: Sorry about the really long wait, anyone who is still reading this fic. My Muse disappeared down a black hole, and it's only just started to return. Hopefully, you'll enjoy this chapter and think it was sort of worth the wait, although you probably won't, especially because action scenes aren't exactly my forte….

Wishes and Morals

In the future, I really should be more careful what I wish for, Owen instructed himself inwardly, parrying his opponent's blow and then urging Happy forward so he could launch an attack sequence of his own. Unfortunately, he was about as cautious as pirates were honest. That was why he had ended up here, engaged in a sword duel to the death with a Scanran, and, metaphorically speaking, up to his ears in Stormwing dung.

After all, if he were a more prudent sort, he would not have invested weeks in wishing for excitement. Then maybe he and the rest of the men on patrol with him would not have run into this band of Scanran raiders. Of course, if Owen had possessed a grain of sense, he would never have consented to becoming Wyldon's squire at all. Surely, if he had waited just a tad longer, someone else would have offered, and he would be guarding the relatively peaceful borders with Tyra, Tusaine, or Galla right now. Yes, that would have been boring, but, at the moment, he wasn't certain that excitement was as splendid as everyone made it out to be.

The feel of cold, unforgiving steel slamming into his chest plate returned him to the present. Mithros, he was an idiot. Musing like that in the middle of a confrontation like this was guaranteed to be deadlier than a hanging, as Lord Wyldon would be more than happy to remind him. Then again, he couldn't afford to berate himself right now, either, so he immersed himself in the fray again.

All around him, the Scanran weapons clanged against the Tortallan ones, but he blocked out the sights and the sounds of the dozens of miniature conflicts that comprised this skirmish. Instead, he focused on the blade of the man he was battling. He devoted himself to slashing in to intercept it and redirect it repeatedly, and to seizing opportunities to penetrate his foe's guards.

His brain disengaged, and his muscles and instincts took over. His pounding heart provided the cadence for his movements as surely as a drillmaster's commands. Strike and counterstrike. Assault and block. Blow and counterblow. Attack and parry. Advance and retreat. Leap and spin. Slash and evade. Bind and counterbind. Broken time and recovery. Then start again.

Owen had no idea how long this drama reenacted itself before he managed to slip his hilt around his adversary's like a snake and tug it out of the other's clasp. The adrenaline throbbing in his veins, Owen grinned in satisfaction and spurred Happy forward.

The next thing he knew, he had chopped of the other man's helmet and slit his throat. Wonderful, Owen congratulated himself, as he gazed down at the corpse that, possibly a minute ago, had been crossing blades with him. He had accounted for two enemies today. That wasn't too bad for a first engagement, really.

It was only then, when he studied the body below him with the necklace of crimson where Owen had sliced his throat, that the adolescent realized that the man he had just killed wasn't a man, but a lad about his age. Mithros, the teenager I just killed might not ever have even shaved, Owen observed, stupefied.

At least I didn't do away with a woman or a little girl, he tried to console himself. Yet, the words were as comforting as finding a half-eaten fruit on the ground after a flood had just wiped out your crops. Bile burned its way up his esophagus, and he struggled not to vomit. After all, breakfast had been revolting enough without him revisiting it in the most disgusting manner imaginable. However, he couldn't squash the nasty voice inside the back of his head so easily that demanded, _What did you do that for?_

_For Tortall_, the rest of his brain responded automatically. _I have to protect my country. _

_He was your age_, the harsh voice in the rear of his mind snorted witheringly. _Oh, yes, a major threat he was, all right. I bet everyone in the realm will be able to sleep much more comfortably in their beds now that he's gone. Are you going after bunnies next? _

Before the rest of his brain could retort that the adolescent he had killed had definitely mastered the art of wielding a sword, Owen felt his armor rattle as someone shook his shoulder roughly.

"Go all introspective on me sometime when it won't get your head removed from your shoulders, if it's not too much of a bother, Jesslaw," barked Lord Wyldon, who was, presumably, the one who had returned him to reality with a jolt. Glancing around him in an attempt to regain his bearings, Owen spotted that two Tortallans― Berend Carter and Claus Heywood if he was remembering their names correctly― and seven Scanrans were spread-eagled on the ground. All were stretched out in pools of their own blood and had expressionless, glazed eyes― eyes that would never behold anything else.

Nausea threatened to dominate him again as he recalled how he had seen Berend and Claus about the fort, standing watch or dining in the mess hall, and it hit him how tenuous the bond between the body and the spirit was, and how simple it was to break. Luckily, his compulsion to vomit was held at bay once more as Wyldon continued imperiously, "Hurry up, all of you. The remaining Scanrans have retreated for now, but they'll regroup soon. We need to return to the fort now, or we'll be surrounded. Later, we'll see to the burial of our men."

The five surviving Tortallan soldiers, who had relieved the enemy dead of their weapons and anything else valuable, obediently scooped up the remains of Berend and Claus. Silently, the Tortallans headed back toward their fortress, carrying their dead.

"What are we going to do about the enemy dead?" Owen asked through dry lips. Surprised by how parched they were, he moistened them with his tongue and tried to ignore the sickening suspicion about the fate that would befall the deceased Scanrans that was creeping around inside his heart and mind.

"We'll leave them for the Stormwings," Wyldon educated him, as crisp and detached as always. "The Stormwings will take care of them within a day, and we're far enough away from the base that their actions won't contaminate our drinking water. Why waste time to dig the enemy dead a hole? Why desecrate our dead by burying the enemy alongside them? Why take up safe ground for corpses around the citadel for them?"

That was all true, yet Owen was an idealist, not a pragmatist, so he couldn't prevent from stuttering, "My lord, the boy I just killed hadn't even shaved before and he looked about my age―"

"Yes, he did," confirmed Wyldon as they approached their stronghold. "What's your point?"

"That we can't just leave him there for the Stormwings to desecrate, sir," Owen insisted. The mental picture of Stormwings relieving themselves on the teenager he had just killed made him noxious. Abruptly, anger at his knightmaster flared inside him. At his core, Wyldon was a just and honorable individual, so how could he endorse such a policy, nonetheless orchestrate it? It was immoral to abandon anyone to the Stormwings. Even bandits didn't deserve such treatment. Fellow warriors who happened to be fighting on the other side of the war certainly didn't warrant it.

He attempted to tell himself that what occurred to a dead body wasn't particularly important. Logically, a body was nothing more than a container for the spirit. Therefore, once the spirit had departed this world, the body no longer possessed any real significance. Somehow, though, he couldn't convince himself of this. Despite his best efforts to persuade himself of this philosophy, he still believed that allowing Stormwings to befoul a corpse showed irreverence for the dead, and there was no honor to be had in treating the dead disrespectfully, anyway.

"We certainly can," Lord Wyldon informed him briskly, as they rode into the fort, once the sentries had recognized them and had swung open the entrance to admit them. "Furthermore, that's exactly what we will do."

Perhaps he detected the horror on his squire's features, because his tone softened as he went on while they directed their mounts toward the stable, "You don't need to feel guilty about killing that boy, Owen. It was either him or you. Frankly, I'm glad it was you who survived. If he were in your position, he would have slain you without a qualm. If you had perished and the Scanrans had won that skirmish, they would have left you to the tender mercies of the Stormwings without a second's hesitation."

"So we sink to their level, my lord?" Owen demanded, gawking at his knightmaster as they both dismounted and handed their reins to a pair of hostlers. "You said earlier that Scanrans were primitives, and now you embrace their morals?"

"Look around you, Jesslaw," ordered Lord Wyldon, gesturing at the clapboard stabble with its stalls packed with battle horses and at the fortress outside with its red dirt ground, its spartan barracks, administrative buildings, privies, and mess hall. "This is warfare. It isn't some perfect world. It isn't even a temple or a palace. In case it's missed your notice as much does, this is life on the edge― of existence and morality. Sometimes, to survive, we have to make ethically questionable choices."

"In order to survive, we're supposed to sacrifice our honor then?" Owen stammered. "Why waste time hammering ethics into us if they expect us to discard them in battle? Why tell us that our morality is more crucial than our lives if it isn't true, sir?"

"We're not discarding our ethics," countered Wyldon, and, to Owen's surprise, he reverted to calling his squire by his first name again, as he elaborated, "At the risk of hopelessly confusing you, Owen, I would reduce all the complex rules of moral conduct you learned in your ethics lessons to one guiding principle: duty."

"Duty?" Owen echoed, unimpressed and bewildered. Sure, he had comprehended how important duty was to a knight, especially to the one standing before him, but it seemed like a rather dull word to base one's whole existence around.

"Yes, duty," repeated Wyldon with a trace of irascibility. "You should have heard that word before if you didn't sleep through all your ethics classes."

"I've heard it before, my lord," Owen reassured him.

"Good, then maybe your brain won't explode when I suggest that there are three types of duty. Listed in order of importance, they are: duty to yourself, duty to your family and your friends, and duty to your country. Duty to yourself is simple to understand, as it merely entails speaking the truth, fighting bravely, and generally behaving with a semblance of integrity. Duty to your family and your friends is almost as self-explanatory. It involves caring for and respecting your parents, treating your spouse with civility and gentleness, teaching your children, and defending your blood and those close enough to feel like that. The most complicated and most important duty, though, is duty to your country. Your duty to your country obliges you to do your job, to work hard, to obey your superiors, and to protect the rest of your people at all costs. Nothing outweighs your duty to your country. After all, it would be hard to explain to a village that your conscience amounted to more in your eyes than their lives."

Owen considered this, his forehead furrowed, and then inquired, "But, sir, are we really saving them if we become as evil as the Scanrans?"

"If you disagree with me, Jesslaw, venture out and bury the enemy dead," pronounced Wyldon, all curtness.

"That would be disobeying your direct order to leave them there," Owen muttered, shaking his head. "That's treason, my lord, and treason is even worse than disrespecting the dead."

"Exactly," agreed his knightmaster with less acerbity than normal. "Welcome to war. Here there are no good decisions, just less bad ones."

"We're forked," grumbled Owen, utilizing the term some card players used when all the options open to them were losing propositions. The second after the phrase escaped from his mouth, he noted mentally that another four-letter word beginning with the letter f could have fit the context nicely as well. While he was talking to Wyldon, however, it was just as well that he had refrained from employing it.

Wyldon's only reply to this assessment was to reach into his armor and remove a scroll of parchment, which he handed to his squire. As Owen accepted it and saw that it was addressed in Margarry's handwriting, although it no longer smelled of her after being in Wyldon's armor, he remarked, "This came for you today. I was planning on giving it to you earlier, but then it was time for patrol, so I decided to wait until we returned to hand it over to you."

Spotting that Owen was about to rip open the envelope and read the epistle inside it as eagerly as a starved child would devour a feast, he stated, "I understand that my daughter has become something of a confidante for you, Jesslaw."

"Yes, my lord," Owen affirmed, swallowing his nervousness and determining that while his knightmaster's comment hadn't been a direct question, it undeniably required a response.

"That doesn't trouble me too much, since everyone here needs someone to talk candidly with or else they might very well for mad, but I don't want you describing today's skirmish and the aftermath in great detail to her," stipulated Wyldon. "Remember that she wasn't raised for warfare as you were. If something about battle upsets you, it will devastate her. It is a man's obligation to protect the delicate sensibilities of the more emotional gender."

"Kel isn't emotional, sir," Owen protested, bristling.

"She risked repeating four years as a page in order to find her maid," snapped Wyldon. "If that's not emotional, nothing is. Now, swear to me that you won't write to Margarry about today's skirmish, or I won't permit you to write to her at all."

"I promise that I won't tell her about the skirmish," Owen vowed. Having a restricted correspondence with Margarry was better than having none at all as anyone who wasn't as blind as a mole could discern. "I don't ever want to cause her any anguish." After all, he wasn't Bevin.

"For your sake, I hope that you don't." With that, Wyldon pivoted and strode out of the stable. For a moment, Owen stared after him. Then, the squire plopped onto a pile of hay for the horses and read Margarry's letter in the sunlight streaming in through the open doorway:

_Dear Squire Owen (and my many guardians who selflessly preserve my reputation at the price of my privacy),_

_I hope that all the gods and goddesses are keeping you in better care than they are keeping me. To be unseemingly brazen, I feel like these supernatural entities have abandoned me over the past week. In all fairness to them, I suppose that there was not much of a reason for them to stay beside me when I am, due to my flighty female mind, always contemplating something else when I am praying to them. Even deities lose patience with such a fickle, worldly creature, I am afraid. _

_Ironically enough, the absence of the gods and goddesses from my life has brought wisdom to me, as much as a lady can claim to possess wisdom, of course. Although the knowledge has come at a dreadful cost that I would give just about everything but my most valuable commodity (my chastity, obviously) to avoid, I now appreciate the importance of patience. Now I know why a maiden ought to value today and not long for tomorrow, because the unpleasant truth is that, no matter how horrid today might seem, tomorrow will probably be worse. After all, nothing is so awful that it can't be rendered more terrible. _

_Being a young and foolish lady, I often dreamed about escaping life inside the convent walls. In a display of typical maidenly folly, Squire Owen, I believed that the needlepoint, cooking, drawing, music, and dancing lessons that I was subjected to for my own good were the worst tortures a noblewoman was likely to face. Sadly, my optimistic view was punctured when I discovered that, for most maidens, marriage is even more tedious. (I suppose that even after knowing about Anwen's dreadful marriage, I thought that most couples would be like Mother and Father not like Anwen and Sir Bastard, but I thought wrong, because I am an idealistic imbecile.)_

_I learned this three days ago when the delightful fiancés of my friend Cassia, one of the girls in the chamber down the hallways named Dalia, and her roommate Levana came to visit the women who will be wed to them by the end of this summer. Dear Cassia, who can make even the commonest of dishes into something worthy of a banquet and who can dance as gracefully as a swan, is stuck with a toothless old man. He also happens to be nowhere near as charming as she is. This was evidenced beyond all possible dispute when he smashed the cake she had spent hours preparing for him on the floor when he realized that it wasn't pudding. (Since they had never had the pleasure of meeting before, she can't be blamed for assuming that he had teeth, if you ask this silly lass.) Additionally, he has a hideous peg leg, so I surmise that he won't be doing much dancing with her, and that he'll be too jealous to allow her to dance with many other gentlemen. Of course, it's perfectly natural that such a senior gentleman would harbor such sentiments. I mean, if I were that ugly, I would worry that even the purest of spouses such as Cassia would betray me, especially if I saw fit to conduct myself with all the courtesy of a ram. What I, being an airhead, don't comprehend is why he waited so long to be bound in holy matrimony to a proper lady. However, I am willing to be generous and blame it on his senility, rather than on any personal failings that he might be able to govern. I can accomplish this task by reminding myself that well-bred women are charitable whenever they encounter flaws in anyone. Naturally, now that I see the rewards Cassia has reaped for behaving like a proper damsel, I want nothing more than to model myself after my dear friend. _

_Still, if I was in any doubt about the rewards that would come my way in time if I was a virtuous damsel in distress, the cases of Dalia and Levana should have been enough to sweep away any skepticism inside my sinful soul. _

_Pretty Dalia with her ebony locks and her voice like a mermaid has been matched with a lecherous nobleman almost as ancient as Cassia's partner. The man Dalia is going to wed either uses a swamp for cologne or else is an animated corpse who has been dead, judging by his smell, for at least a decade. The only positive thing that I can establish about him, Owen, is that his appearance isn't a lie as the appearances of so many men are. No, he smells like a gutter, and this suits him since his mind is always there. _

_As for bashful Levana, who can embroider a tapestry in the time it takes most of us to embroider a handkerchief, she would do well to sew her mouth shut. After all, as far as I can see, she'll never be able to get a word in edgewise with her boastful, foppish fiancé, who has no compunctions about ordering her around like a Carthaki would his slave. _

_Anyway, I have recently recognized that there is no point in leaving the convent if the life I will enter is even worse than the one I lead here. Yet, I know I can't stay here forever. Just looking at Rosalynn is enough to assure me of that. My roommate has finally accepted that she will never marry, and her family has bullied her into taking the vows of a priestess, even though she suits a life of divine contemplation about as well as a goose or a donkey. Now, she sleeps with the other novices. She never smiles or giggles like the vain, vapid girl she was a few weeks ago, because she can no longer adorn herself in fancy jewels and dresses or spend hours styling her hair and putting on her makeup. _

_No matter how much I despised her frivolous laughter, I can't help but pity her. She was fool, yes, but she couldn't control her stupidity as she was born that way, and society praised her for being an idiot, so she would have been an even bigger imbecile to change. As such, she has done nothing to warrant this mistreatment. Nobody deserves to be confined forever in a convent and trapped in an existence as joyless as the gray walls that imprison one. _

_Being blessed with access to the spiritual counsel of numerous priestesses, I am aware that hatred is a slow-acting poison that murders the one who carries it. Yet, I can't prevent myself from loathing her parents any more than I can refrain from detesting Cassia's, Dalia's, and Levana's. Parents are intended to shield their offspring, and, instead of doing that, they sentence their children to miserable lives with little prospect of escape. Humans might scoff at birds for throwing chicks out of nests, but that is nothing more than hypocrisy to me. Actually, in my opinion, the birds are better, because at least they never clip off the wings of their own baby songbirds. _

_Maybe the gods and goddesses haven't abandoned me. Perhaps it is me, in my hatred, who has strayed far from their benevolence. Yet, surely, they could hunt down a foolish girl if they wanted to if they were so mighty. Since it would be blasphemy to imply that they are not omnipotent, I reckon they have abandoned me like human parents are wont to do. As above, so below, after all. There must be cosmic symmetry or else we would have chaos. _

_At the convent, at any rate, there won't be mayhem any time soon, for any change is quickly covered over. For instance, Rosalynn's bed in the chamber I once shared with her has already been filled by a ten-year-old girl called Mariya. Looking at her hazelnut colored hair and eyes, I can't resist pondering over what destiny holds for her, although doing so tears my heart into a hundred new pieces. Will she be forced to marry a brute who smashes her cake or her face? Or will she be shoved into the bed of a lewd old scalawag who makes a wet rat seem attractive by comparison? Or will she be matched with an egotistical fop who treats her like a slave? Or will she be doomed to grow old and rot in this disheartening place that leaches all the merriment out of a body as surely as any war does? Oh, the brightness of all the futures that await sweet Mariya, who is as modest as a violet, nearly blind me with their intensity. _

_I don't know what the future holds for her, and, truthfully, I wouldn't want to be burdened with such information. Even if I was privy to what would happen to her, I wouldn't be able to rescue her, so what would be the point of my prescience? Still, whenever she sings, the mockingbird melody of her chants and ballads reminds me of Dalia and so I envision her in Dalia's position in six or seven years. _

_Squire Owen, it has just occurred to me that this note is rather depressing in nature. At any rate, it is not something that a maiden, who should be a symbol of beauty for someone who is enduring the nightmare of war, should send a squire. I know that, and I wish I could be more upbeat, but I can't. Right now, I don't even have the energy to pretend to be cheery for you, and, besides, I've been taught that lying is wrong. Anyway, as far as I am concerned, men should try not to make women so miserable if they expect us to be merry for them. _

_Besides, to be honest at the peril of offending you, I don't care about being a perfect damsel anymore. I won't be modest if that earns me a lewd, gross husband. I won't be shy and humble if that sentences me to a life with a braggart. I won't make pretty things for others it they'll just be wrecked. If women are the weaker sex, I am tired of the stronger sex leaning on us for support and giving nothing back. I have no problem weaving handkerchiefs and soothing men depressed after the trauma of warfare as long as men strive to comfort me in return. A relationship of equals is the only one this maiden, who maybe isn't such an idiot, is interested in. Your reply to this statement will tell me how smart I am to seek such a relationship with you, Squire Owen, and will provide me with something to calculate how high the odds of my dying a shriveled shrew are. _

_A long time ago, when I was perhaps six, I overheard Father describing my sisters and me to his friend Lord Matthias. Since he didn't know I was there, I know he spoke the truth, and he claimed that of his daughters, the oldest was kind and modest, his second silly and beautiful, and his third smart and sharp-tongued. For the record, I am clever enough to understand that comment renders me the least desirable on the marriage market, especially when you factor into the equation the fact that I am the youngest girl. Therefore, it would appear that I am the least likely to find happiness. _

_However, I am determined to do so, especially because the sweetest one who deserved happiness the most didn't receive it, and I want to acquire it for her. At the moment, I am far from glad, and only the silly sister is happy, but I dare to hope that if the stupid sister can pick her own mate so well, why can't the smart one? _

_May Mithros and the Goddess bless you as they haven't Anwen, Rosalynn, Cassia, Dalia, and Levana, _

_Margarry_

When he finished reading her epistle, Owen gaped at it as though he had never glimpsed parchment before. As he had heard about the fates that had befallen the young women Margarry had discussed, his mood had blackened, since it had seemed like everyone was suffering and that there was nothing in Tortall that he was fighting to protect, anyhow.

However, when he read the closing two paragraphs, he was befuddled as opposed to saddened. Was Margarry hinting that she would be willing to wed him, or was he so attracted to her that he was misinterpreting her words? If she had been alluding to marriage, was she merely flirting with him for amusement or to avenge all women by wounding one boy, or was she seriously encouraging him?

I wish she would just write what she means, he complained to himself. It would make responding to her so much less complicated. Yes, due to her enigmatic ending, replying to her was going to be a nightmare and not just because he couldn't share his horrible day with her. All he knew at the moment was that he would be penning a very sympathetic response emphasizing how fulfilling he would find a relationship of equals…

A relationship of equals. That's what Margarry craved. Surely, an equal would not need to be protected from the harsh reality of battle, and Wyldon had read Margarry's note. Thus, he understood how much being treated like an equal mattered to her. Yet, he had forbidden Owen to confide in her about killing that Scanran boy and the guilt he felt about doing so. Why? Was trying to sabotage Owen's relationship with Margarry?

No, though, that didn't make sense, since he could have just prevented Owen from corresponding with Margarry at all if that was his objective. Maybe he was really just trying to keep Margarry, a member of what he saw as the weaker gender, from being disturbed by the truth of war, or maybe he thought she was too troubled at the present to deal with another weight on her chest. Like Margarry, Wyldon was a mystery.

At this juncture, his musings were intruded upon by Quinton dropping down on the hay to his left. Normally, the soldier could be relied upon for a quip about what his young companion could have been doing in the hay mound with a kitchen girl, but after the death of two soldiers, he was more somber.

"I've been lookin' all over for ye," Quinton announced. "Since ye was on patrol with Berend and Claus, I thought ye might be takin' it hard."

"No worse than anyone else, I suppose," answered Owen. "I mean, obviously, I'm upset that they died, and I feel badly for their families. I wasn't close enough to them for their deaths to really cut me up, though. I wasn't close enough to them to forget that people die in wars, and it might just be them who was slaughtered."

"I see, but then why lay here alone?" pressed Quinton. "Ye don't normally spend much time by yerself."

"I've been thinking." The words exploded out of Owen before he even considered how to frame them. "I killed two men today. That shouldn't have really mattered to me, because I've killed bandits and stuff before, but today I killed someone who was my age. Someone who had never shaved. Someone who probably never slept with a girl, and maybe never even kissed one. Someone who would never marry or have children or anything―"

"Don't start thinkin' like that," Quinton interrupted, shaking his head. "Thoughts like that are more dangerous than irate centaurs. It's a choice betwixt ye and the enemy. Don't ever be forgettin' that unless ye be wantin' to commit suicide, in which case I can think of a lot less painful ways to go."

"That's essentially what Lord Wyldon told me," Owen sighed.

"Ye would do well to heed him then," advised Quinton. "After over two decades on the battlefield, he has a vague idea of what he's doin'. That be why soldiers go farther for him than they go for most commanders."

"But I can't stop thinking that way," Owen admitted. "I can't stop thinking that the boy I killed did nothing wrong―"

"Then listen to me now, and I'll get ye to stop," interjected Quinton grimly. "Chances are that boy was no innocent. He was part of a Scanran raiding party. That means he was willin' to rape women, impale children on his sword, destroy crops, steal livestock, and burn villages."

Listening to Quinton, Owen discovered that he was feeling much more upbeat. Overall, Quinton's explanation was credible. Yet, he still couldn't refrain from arguing, "That doesn't make him much worse than some of our soldiers, does it? What if he was like you? What if all he wanted was to go home, and I was the one who made it impossible for him to ever do so?"

"If he was anything like me, then he would have been glad to sacrifice himself for the wellbein' of his family," declared Quinton darkly. "Owen, ye didn't create this war, so ye ain't responsible for what goes on in it."

"I guess I know that, but I have difficulty accepting it." Owen bit his lip, then choked out, "How do you cope with everything, Quinton? I've been here a little more than a month, and I'm already all torn up."

"Experience makes it better. I reckon that a body can adapt to almost anythin' if its survival be at stake, and war is among them." Quinton shrugged. ""When you come down to it, I suppose I cope because I have to. The options around here are laughin', cryin', shoutin', goin' berserk, or gettin' yerself killed, as far as I can see. Myself, I choose to laugh everythin' off if I can't fight it."

"That's all I can do― laugh to keep from sobbing and make jokes about things that aren't funny?"

"Pretty much." Quinton bobbed his head affirmatively. "Ye have to stay on the sunny side of things. No matter what awful stuff occurs, ye have to seek out the good, and make it count for more than the rotten things. In the end, the good is what will keep ye goin' even when ye think ye can't go on. For me, the good is my friends, the knowledge that I'm carin' for my family, and my girlfriend Bria. Durin' the bad times, I horse around with my buddies when I can and reflect on how I'm goin' to propose to Bria when I can't."

"How are you going to propose to her?" Owen wanted to know, his gray eyes gleaming, but he wasn't thinking of the kitchen girl who was Quinton's girlfriend. Rather, his mind was with Margarry.

"Oh, when Midwinter comes, I'm goin' to hang a ring for her off one of the mistletoes near where she distributes food." Quinton grinned, clearly satisfied with his ingenuity. "If I have a clerk write her name on the box and who it's from, she'll know what it means."

"You really are going to make it special for her, then," murmured Owen. He wondered how he would ever devise such a clever fashion in which to propose to Margarry. Of course, to be brutally honest with himself, he probably would never need to, since Wyldon would consent to Owen asking for his young daughter's hand when there was a blizzard in July.

"Aye, my mama didn't get a special proposal or anythin', so the woman I marry definitely is goin' to." As he established as much, Quinton shoved himself to his feet. "Come on. They'll have dug a hole outside the fort for Berend and Claus by now. Everybody will go and pray over their bodies. Then we'll return to the barracks to sing funeral dirges and hymns from all parts of the country and exchange memories of Berend and Claus. I promise ye that nobody tells stories or sings like soldiers do. Troubadours have nothin' on us, I assure ye."

"Of course they don't," Owen smirked, as he rose, too. "After all, that's the army― meet new people from all over the realm, eat with them, tell stories with them, sing with them, and then die with them or bury them."

"Aye, and the best part is that ye can do it all in one day and save time," observed Quinton dryly, as they exited the stable and headed toward the place where Berend and Claus were to be buried.


	13. Chapter 13

Light and Dark

A week later, Owen was sitting on a bench in front of the mess hall, struggling to compose an appropriate reply to Margarry's letter. Although he would have been able to write better in his quarters with a candle and firelight, he had noticed that the soldiers were more amiable with him the more time he spent around them, even if he was answering private correspondence. Apparently, a squire who was willing to scribble notes on a bench outside the mess hall was not guilty of putting on airs the way one who wrote alone in his room was. In this instance, he was content to trade in extra illumination for the soldiers' friendship. Besides, it wasn't as if it was the scant illumination provided by the sky now that it was twilight was making it challenging for him to write. No, it was good old-fashioned writer's block that was giving him trouble. Simply put, it was difficult for him to respond to Margarry, because he had lots to say to her and no words or wit to express them. He may as well have possessed no fingers for all the help they were when he was trying to pen an epistle to her.

Finally, after reading the note she had sent him a week ago, which was now crinkled from all the occasions he had folded it, for the twelfth time, Owen began to scrawl across his blank parchment:

_My dear Lady Margarry,_

_I hope that this letter finds you in better spirits than you were when you last wrote to me. I apologize for the long time I took to send you this note. Please understand that it wasn't indifference that made me delay, but rather too much feeling for even me to bear. Your letter caused me to feel many different emotions ranging from depression to hope, and I didn't have the courage necessary to write to you until I had worked through some of the spider web of emotions inside me. Once I had done that, I discovered that I still didn't know how to respond to your note. I am somewhat embarrassed to admit that this is the ninth note that I have written to you in answer to your latest letter, and, though I fear that it is as lame as the others, I shall dispatch it with the next messenger, because I feel badly enough at taking this long to respond already. _

_I should like very much to be a comfort to you, Margarry, because you have been one to me on several occasions. Countless times, your notes have cheered me, and whenever things get rough up here, I just close my eyes and picture your smile, and everything that's bad fades away at least for a moment or two. However much that I wish I could repay the favor, I am afraid that I am not up to the task. I have no delicacy, for I have been told constantly that I am too blunt. I can plunge swords and lances through men's hearts, but I can't mend broken hearts. I know a million ways to make people howl in pain, but I don't know a single way to stop someone from crying. Yes, I know how to perform some basic battlefield healing, but I know nothing about healing people's hearts or minds. When it comes down to it, Margarry, all I am is hands—a weapon that has been taught. _

_Somehow, though, I think that even if I was more diplomatic and actually knew something about mending torn hearts, I would still be unable to truly console you. If you ask, me, I reckon that there are some sorrows that no words can make right, and the soothing words of those who have never experienced similar circumstances are hollower than a fool's head. In my life, I have never experienced anything like what you described in your last letter. I can sympathize with what you have endured, but I can't give you advice when I have never suffered what you have. _

_I do understand what you meant when you spoke of feeling like Mithros and the other gods and goddesses have abandoned you. Sometimes, when I look around me at the war, I can't prevent myself from wondering if the gods and goddesses have forsaken me. I don't like to believe that they have, but when I see the chaos and gore of battle, I can't control my head, since my mind has got a mind of its own. All I can say is that it is the worst feeling in the world to imagine that the gods and goddesses have turned their backs on you, because it seems as if you are all alone in the world and that you will always be so. That's why I prefer to tell myself that nobody suffers in vain, that the gods and goddesses are watching us and will reward us as we deserve, and that, since Mithros gave us free will, he is not responsible for the crimes of men—men are. As silly as it sounds, I have to keep my faith in Mithros and the other gods and goddesses, because, if I don't, what else will I have in the face of all the awful things that have transpired? I choose to believe that they haven't forsaken us, since that is what gets me though, and sometimes surviving is all you can hope for. _

_I assure you that your mind is no flightier than mine, since mine is also prone to disengaging during prayer. Somehow, I can't regard this as a sin. To me, the point of being alive is to live, obviously, and prayer generally appears to me to be a waste of time that could have been better used doing something else. I think that most people feel the same way, for I have yet to look around a chapel and not see most of the occupants whispering to their neighbors, tapping their feet impatiently against the floor, or staring out the windows. The only beings whose minds don't seem to roam during prayer are those priests and priestesses who lecture us for not appreciating the gifts the gods and goddesses have heaped upon us while forgetting to enjoy themselves the greatest blessing of all: life. When they die, they will never have truly lived, for, even though I have been at war for the past several months, I have seen far more of the beauty of this existence than they have. While their gazes remain locked on heaven, I have seen the glory that mankind is capable of. I have seen the compassion, humor, bravery, and nobility that only extreme crises can bring out in humanity. For that, I am forever grateful, since I can remember the heights I have seen men attain whenever I feel particularly depressed. _

_Personally, I think your newfound wisdom is just the result of your experiences and not of the absence (or presence) of anything supernatural. I suppose you are right about cherishing every moment, because, after all, you do never know if tomorrow will be worse or indeed if you will be dead then. Of course, no matter how much I tell myself to enjoy the present, my mind does have a dreadful habit of straying toward the future. I guess it is in my nature to yearn for the future. Even though I have seen that the future often does not bring what we hope, I still can't stop dreaming about it, because sometimes it feels like that is all I have. I can make the best of each moment, yes, but I think the only reason that I do that is because I hope to see something better come. _

_Frankly, from what you've confided to me in your letters, I don't blame you in the slightest for dreaming about escaping the convent. The needlepoint, drawing, music, and dancing lessons sounded like nightmares, and almost make page training sound like a bundle of joy. From the way it sounds, the only escape that you have from the convent is marriage. (This comment is probably too bold, but at least it isn't a lie. I have my flaws, but I am no liar. I speak the truth as far as I see it, and if you couldn't take that, I suspect that you would have ceased writing to me weeks ago.) The degree of escape and whether or not it is the equivalent of jumping off a cliff to evade an approaching enemy squadron appears to depend on the character of the man you wed. _

_This may be unpleasant and unfair, but that is reality as you and I know it. Maybe I am stupid to convince myself that changing that is possible, but I do. I've learned from watching Kel fight the bullies in the pages wing that change is possible if you deal with one bit of injustice at a time. Sometimes, as naïve as it sounds, one person speaking out does make all the difference in the world, because there are many people that are outraged by unfairness, but who don't dare to protest until they witness someone else do so. That will take time, though, so, at the moment, I reckon that your best hope is still to find a good man to marry. Of course, that good man doesn't necessarily have to be me, although I won't object if it is, since I do know plenty of men from page training who are the type who were able to regard Kel as their equal at least like I was. _

_As for your friend Cassia, she has my deepest sympathies. She seems like far too nice a woman to be paired with such a vile man, who is plainly unworthy of the title gentleman. I am by no means the politest person in Tortall, yet even I realize that if you are given food, you shouldn't smash it on the floor. That toothless villain should be dragged up here. Then, he will understand that a cake that one might have to mash up to eat if one happens to be toothless is a tremendous boon. After all, those of us fighting on the Scanran border recognize that a salad with a single spot of green in it is a blessing. I hope that Cassia will still be able to dance, even if she won't be able to have a partner. I think that as long as she can dance, she will be able to find some sort of happiness._

_If Cassia's betrothed has a peg leg, that perhaps explains, but does not justify, his boorish manners. One of my soldier friends here told me that sometimes men who are injured take out their feelings of inadequacy resulting from their disability out on their wives. These men are just like the bullies I knew in the pages wing. They are the smallest, worst sort of people, because they can only feel big if they make others feel like a speck of dirt, and they can only shine if they have extinguished everyone else's fire. In that, they show their own weakness, for strong beings can make others feel big and can feed the flames in others, because they comprehend that doing so does not lessen their height or dim them in anyway, and actually, makes them grow. As such, I feel like I can only tell you what you already know: any faults in this couple are with the man and not Cassia. _

_In the matter of Dalia, I can only pray that her singing helps her survive and that she has a lot of colds in the future to block out the stench of the lewd old man who will wed her. Perhaps, though, she will get lucky, and he will perish soon. If she is his widow, she will inherit some gold from him, and she will never have to marry again unless she desires it. Given what she had to endure with the ancient lecher, I am not sure that she will be interested in marriage again, and I don't blame her at all for that. I almost vomited at your description of his odor, Margarry, and I am used to smelling sweat and other bodily fluids. _

_As for Levana, she has my pity as well. Very little is worse than trying to talk to a braggart, since they only are interested in their own end of a conversation. The idea of being stuck with one all day for decades sickens me. I would just hope that she can focus on her embroidery and not on her husband. Seriously, she might be able to get away with doing so. Most fops are so concentrated on their own boasting and are of so self-centered a frame of mind that it never occurs to them that their audience might not be attending on their every word. If she can't block out his voice while she works at her embroidery, perhaps she can fortify herself with the notion that every word he says is probably a lie. Braggarts are just bags of hot air. For all their yattering about the awesome adventures they supposedly had, they are the first ones to duck under the table when the shout "Incoming" is heard. Perhaps even they spot how pathetic they are. Maybe they are just covering up for their inadequacies with boasting, just as the bullies of this world are. Perhaps that is why no real hero ever brags. Only fops have time to babble on about their splendid victories; the rest of us have to go about our business and actually try to do something worthwhile with our lives._

_For Rosalynn, too, I feel sympathy. It is no wonder that she drowned in this world when nobody ever bothered to teach her how to swim. All they ever taught her was to wait for someone else to swim for her, and the tragedy of her life was that no one ever fulfilled that promise. Instead, those who swore to protect her just watched her drown. I'm mad at her parents and her instructors for failing her so thoroughly as well. She may have been a fool, but I think idiots need the best guidance of all, since they are not able to figure things out for themselves as well as others. _

_Hatred may be a sin, but I also think it is a virtue, Margarry. After all, hatred is often born out of an outrage at injustice or love of others. In that sense, it is hard to imagine something more sacred. The day we can no longer feel ire at the horrid things mankind inflicts on one another is the day that I think we are truly lost. One would have to possess a heart of stone not to despise the people who have destroyed the lives of innocent young women without a qualm. I have seen soldiers trained to kill behave with much more compassion, so nothing excuses what was done to these girls in the name of greed. _

_As for your new roommate Mariya, I think you should treasure her company and not look to her future. However, if you must look toward her future, do so with hope, not despair. Believe that she will marry a man who will love her and treat her with the respect that she deserves as a human being. Sometimes a touch of faith can go a long way, miracles occasionally occur, and wishes have been granted, because sometimes Mithros and the Goddess manage to hear our prayers. _

_Yes, your note was rather depressing, and this letter is hardly a ray of sunshine, and possibly is not something a maiden should be receiving from a squire who has sworn not to distress her. Still, however depressing your letter was, it was truthful, and I would never want you to be less than honest with me. In my opinion, the truth is prettier than a thousand sweet lies. Besides, if something is troubling you, I should like to know about it. Even if I can do nothing to aid you, I should like to try. As stupid as it sounds, I reckon that my trying to right things will make us both feel better. _

_I would be the last person in the country to look down my nose at you because you don't care about being a perfect lady. Not only is one of my closest friends Keladray of Mindlelan, who is many things but maidenly is not among them, but I am far from a perfect squire. I am too tactless and headstrong, yet I have come to appreciate my own imperfection. Sometimes society's ideas of right and wrong don't match mine, and I have to answer to my conscience before everything else. I may not always behave as I should and my conscience sometimes aches, but I still have the comfort that I have acted as best as I knew how. Few can say the same, and if you are among them, Margarry, you have no cause to be ashamed. _

_There is nothing evil about wanting to be treated with the same respect that you show others. Nobody should have to silently accept abuse, and no one should be forced to wed someone who would inflict that on them. To be selfish is wrong, but to be self-confident is good. The only people who will tell you otherwise are afraid of what you might achieve if you were self-confident. You have shown yourself to be generous with me, and I want nothing more than to repay the favor. No matter what happens, Margarry, I promise that I will never think of you as anything less than my equal. _

_Your father is a brilliant commander, and like many talented commanders he has mastered the knack of reading people. He has certainly read you correctly. As for marriage, I think that a man who is dumb enough to fear a woman more intelligent than himself would not wish to wed you, but you would not be happy with such a man, anyway, so you would not have obtained happiness that way. I believe that your wit has given you the sense to seek your own happiness, which allows you to escape a fate like Rosalynn's. _

_I do not doubt that the smart sister can pick her mate as well as the smart sister and will use her brain to acquire her happiness,_

_Sincerely, _

_Owen_

He was just about to read the letter over to check that it contained no blatant spelling errors and did not sound too scandalous for Wyldon when Quinton's friend Tristan plopped down beside him on the bench. When Owen glanced inquiringly at him, Tristan asked, "So what's our little scholar been up to now, eh?"

"Just writing a letter to Margarry," Owen informed him, frowning down at his note, and wishing he knew how to sound more articulate. Margarry always seemed so erudite in her letters to him. Of course, he didn't begrudge her this, since he had nothing against a woman who was smarter than most men, but he yearned to come across as clever, so that she would be impressed by him. There wasn't anything all that impressive about an imbecile, even if he was open to change.

"I should have known," chuckled Tristan. "Ye never write to anyone else."

"I think I should be allowed to write to her as often as I want, seeing as you can talk that kitchen girl—Giselle, I believe her name is—whenever you want, a pleasure which you take advantage of quite frequently, whereas I have to make do with not looking at Margarry or hearing her voice and just reading words on a roll of parchment," Owen observed.

"Oh, Giselle and I do far more than just talk," remarked Tristan, smirking. "If ye don't know what else goes on between a man and a woman, ye don't deserve to write to any young lady at all."

"Perhaps Margarry likes me because I have more than one thing on my mind, if you grasp my meaning," Owen retorted.

"Oh, I have much more than one thing weighing on me mind, I assure ye," declared Tristan, his face changing rapidly from playful derision to brooding as only someone in the army's could.

"Worrying about what disgusting concoction the cooks are about to serve us tonight isn't exactly a grave issue," Owen teased, determined to maintain the levity for a moment longer. If he could keep laughing, he could somehow hold at bay all the horrors of the world, or that was his current philosophy, anyway. During war, however, his perspectives were subject to sudden revision whenever a new calamity announced its unwelcome presence once again with considerable fanfare. Nothing was set in stone during war, and his ever shifting viewpoints reflected that inconstancy.

"That's not what I had in mind," growled Tristan. "What's botherin' me are some rumors I've been hearin' lately."

"You're fretting about rumors? If you are, next time you want your fortune told, don't go to a mind-reader, but rather a palmist, because I know you have a palm," Owen scoffed, waving a dismissive hand. "You know as well as I do that soldiers' gossip is even crazier than the stuff senile old ladies churn out."

"Even soldiers' gossip can be accurate occasionally," argued Tristan. "I reckon this rumor is. Anyway, I had it from Haig, who heard it from Caden, who in turn got wind of it from Kai, who, bein' the son of a scribe, can read and saw the letter from Lord Rauol on Lord Wyldon's desk himself while he was reportin'."

"Oh, well, if it's only three degrees of separation, it must be true," Owen snorted. Yet, he couldn't prevent a trace of interest from entering his voice as he pressed on, "What did Kai allegedly read then?"

"He read that durin' a clash with the Scanrans, one of the squads in the King's Own and Raoul's squire ended up confrontin' a scary monster that nobody had ever seen the likes of before. It was a type of hideous metal killin' device. They barely managed to defeat the beast, and when they did, it emitted a childish wail as it died." As he established as much, Tristan shuddered. "The Scanrans are tamperin' with magic that nobody has ever tampered with before, and who knows what it will do to us. That's what's been toublin' me. I only hope that Mithros will shield us."

"So mote it be." Automatically, Owen muttered the traditional ending to an intercession to the god of justice and warfare. Hoping that this token religious observance would prevent Mithros from smiting him today, he stated in a more businesslike manner, "I don't know if what you claim is true, Tristan. I've been in my lord's office all day. Surely, he would have mentioned that."

"Not necessarily," countered Tristan. "My lord keeps his own counsel. If he thought you didn't need to be apprised of our enemy's newest weapon, you might not know unless you've taken to snoopin' about his belongings."

"Unless I've taken a leaf out of Kai's book on manners, you mean," Owen scowled, considering this point. After a moment's hesitation, he bit his lip, then hedged, "Maybe there is some truth to what you're saying, Tris. After all, Lord Wyldon did add two new men to each patrol group today, and I doubt it was just on a mere whim."

"Aye, Lord Wyldon is about as capricious as a boulder," confirmed Tristan. "If he's done something like that, then there is a reason. Since it's approaching winter now, the fightin' season is supposed to be drawin' to a close for a few months, so normally he would be reducin' a patrol size, not increasin' it. Something is definitely up, and Quinton is on patrol now. He and the rest of the patrol are runnin' a bit late, and I'm startin' to worry about them."

Owen opened his mouth to assert that he was confident that Quinton and the other soldiers out on patrol were fine when the words died on his lips unformed. All the bells in the fortress were suddenly screaming out a warning. Gasping in surprise, he spun around, searching for the cause of the alarm and spotted a blond soldier whose name he could never remember charging into the fort.

As people rushed out of the mess hall and the barracks, congregating around the breathless newcomer, the man choked out, "Mithros preserve me, I only just escaped. We were a little more than a mile away from here when it—a gigantic metal monster—shot out of the trees and attacked us. There was blood and bones everywhere. Nobody survived but me, and I only lived by pretendin' to be dead. Oh, Mithros, they're all dead, and they were so alive but an hour ago. It just doesn't seem possible!"

After that, the bearer of bad news buried his head in his hands, and no one could get another sensible word out of him. That hardly mattered to Owen, though, for the unfortunate messenger had already imparted on Owen everything he needed to know. At the moment, he was indifferent to the military details of the engagement. It was the personal ones that concerned him.

The blond soldier had declared that nobody except himself had survived the encounter with whatever fearsome new weapon the Scanrans were wielding. Quinton was on that ill-fated patrol, which meant, Owen concluded, one dazed thought lumbering onto connect with the next, that Quinton must be dead.

The instant that this notion entered his mind, he toppled over the precipice into the depths of insanity. Now, he could no longer control his brain or his body any more than he could control the celestial dances of the stars. Without his consent, his feet were propelling him away from the throng that was now muttering anxiously about what should be done to combat this lethal new contraption. He didn't know where he was going, but that didn't signify. All that was important to him was that he get away from here and that he distance himself from the army that had let Quinton die.

His legs finally decided to cease pushing him onward on the far rampart. As his knees, which had abruptly been transfigured into pudding, collapsed on him, he slumped against the rampart. The mere suggestion that Quinton was dead seemed utterly preposterous. How could a man who had been such a solid presence in his life suddenly disappear like a mirage?

Yet, Owen had seen the tears streaming down the blond soldier's face, and he knew that every word that had emerged from the blond soldier's lips was fact. Quinton had passed onto the Dark God's realm, and there was to be no carrying him back. He had departed on the final journey from which nobody returned. As more devout beings than Owen would have phrased it, the man's soul had flown away from the cage of his earthly confines, and now it was in the Dark God's realm. Even now, Mithros might be addressing the Dark God on Quinton's behalf. If Mithros were, Quinton would be enjoying the fruits of his labor as a human being soon. Soon, his soul would be granted the peace that he had never received in Tortall. Soon he would never have to eat another rotten meal, for soul's required no sustenance. Soon he would never have to face another pompous noble who discriminated against him, because it was only the cleanliness of the soul that amounted to anything in the hereafter, and few could profess to have a soul purer than Quinton's. Soon Quinton would never have to sacrifice his life and dreams for his family again. Soon Quinton would experience joy as he could never have here.

All of these ruminations flooded through Owen's mind as he struggled to console himself. However, the words were little consolation, because he couldn't persuade himself completely that Quinton was indeed in a better place. There was a cynical contingency in his brain that was the byproduct of associating with Neal too much that couldn't refrain from reminding him that there was no proof that there was a hereafter, and that death might really be the end of everything, after all. Although he didn't want to accept such a grim theory, he surmised that it was of no consequence what he desired to be true, for the facts wouldn't alter themselves just because he willed them to. Thus, he concluded, only a nitwit would be glad that his friend had sailed away from the bittersweet certainty of this plane of existence to the uncertain bliss of the afterlife.

As such, it was perfectly natural that Owen would have done anything to breach the gulf that divided the living from the dead. It was only sensible that he desperately longed to speak with Quinton again, to hear the man's voice, to hear him grumbling about the revolting food distributed in the mess hall, to listen to him laugh, to exercise with him, and to exchange stories with him. Quinton was his advisor, the one who had comforted him when he had killed the Scanran boy he had never even shaved. Quinton was the one who had introduced him to the other soldiers and who had smoothed his entry into life at the fortress. He owed Quinton a massive debt, and now he would never be able to repay him, not that Quinton would have demanded recompense, anyway.

It wasn't fair that Quinton had been dismembered by a monstrous metallic device. It wasn't just that the man would never have a proper burial and that the Stormwings would desecrate his remains. Quinton deserved better. He deserved a long life, a beautiful wedding with Bria, and many children, but if he had to be deprived that, he at least warranted a decent funeral. Nobody can mismanage everything like Mithros, Owen noted furiously, as he swiped the tears off his cheeks with the cuff of his sleeve despite the fact that he recognized that the endeavor would be pointless, because more tears would inevitably stream down his face.

"There you are." Owen wasn't positive how long he sat there before a voice interrupted his musings, and he craned his neck to behold Wyldon approaching. "I've been looking all over for you."

"You have?" Owen asked, his eyes expanding in astonishment as he shoved himself automatically to his feet. Somehow, it sounded ludicrous that his knightmaster would have been searching for him when he was really pretty useless around here, meaning it would have been immeasurably better for Owen to have died, instead of Quinton. Maybe Wyldon had sought him out to impart that data on him. Yet, that seemed improbable, since even Lord Wyldon wasn't that callous.

"Yes, that's what I just said, Owen, and I don't see any cause for me to lie about that," Lord Wyldon educated him, his manner less brusque than usual. Then, to his squire's shock, he removed a cloak from his shoulders and tossed it around the young man's. "Nobody knew where you had gone."

"They must not have looked very hard then, sir, for I've been here the whole time," answered Owen.

"Soldiers are very attuned to a body's need to grieve in private," Wyldon told him. "They respected your right to mourn in private, as do I. However, since you are my squire, I didn't think it was a good idea to allow you to freeze out here overnight."

"Is it really that cold, my lord?" Owen gaped at him. "I didn't notice."

"Of course you didn't. At the moment, the sky could fall around us, and you wouldn't be aware of it." The words might have seemed harsh, but there was no real acerbity behind them, and, at the present, Owen wouldn't have cared if there was. All he was concerned about was Quinton's death. Before Owen could reply to this apt assessment, Wyldon thrust a steaming mug of apple cider at him, ordering, "Drink this. It will make you feel better."

"I don't want to feel better, since that would be dishonoring Quinton's memory, my lord," protested Owen. Yet, the pattern of instantaneous compliance to his knightmaster's commands ensured that he brought the vessel to his lips and sipped. The warm liquid flowed down his throat, soothing him, and, to his shame, he discovered that his heart lost eighty pounds as he swallowed the cider. Plainly, he was a fickle friend, indeed, if a tankard of hot apple cider could compensate on any level for the death of a buddy.

"Everyone dies sooner or later, Owen. You must accept that, especially if you are going to live at war, where the mortality rate is much higher than it is in other places," Lord Wyldon advised, his tone soft. "I know that Quinton was your friend, and it is natural for you to mourn him, but, at the same time, you must understand that he would want you to go on living. No true friend would wish a companion to perish just because he does."

Somehow, the tenderness in his knightmaster's voice made Owen angrier than he would have been if Wyldon had barked at him to evacuate from his rut of grief immediately.

"What do you want me to do, then—frown and mumble, 'Oh, that's a pity; another one of us died'?" he hissed. "After that am I just supposed to move on as if nothing happened, even though someone I cared about is now Stormwing food? If that's what I am intended to do, I'm sorry, but I won't do it, because it just doesn't feel right to me, sir!"

"All the crying in the world isn't going to restore Quinton to life," Lord Wyldon reminded him with far less hostility than he would have typically displayed if Owen had contradicted him. "We honor life by living, not losing ourselves in hysteria."

"Well, that's just it, isn't it, sir?" exploded Owen. "Quinton never got to live the way you did, did he? He never got to get married and have children like he wanted to all because he had to earn money to support his mother and the rest of her children. All he ever experienced was the dark side of life."

"Just like every adult, Quinton made his own choices, and I doubt that he was ever ashamed of the decision he made in that regard," Wyldon educated him, some of his terseness returning. "At any point in time, he could have stopped sending money to his mother. Yet, he elected not to do so. Duty dictated that he tend to his mother and his younger siblings. He fulfilled his duty to them until his last breath, so if he did not regret his decision, we have no business doing so. "

"Him doing his duty didn't provide them with much of a benefit, though, my lord," insisted Owen, staring off into the jet black night. Tonight, there were only a handful of constellations in the dark dome that encircled them all like the roof of a grand cathedral, which was just as remote, alluring, unreachable, and useless as one. Normally, he enjoyed looking out at the blazing stars in the heavens, but tonight he despised doing so. Right now, the stars just resembled individual human lives too much to appeal to him. Gawking up at them, Owen couldn't refrain from regarding them as symbols of himself and everyone he had ever met. Each one of them was a star, lighting the world with their brilliance now and battling valiantly against the night, but eventually they would have to surrender. Eventually, their brightness would be swallowed up in an ocean of darkness until not even ripples remained. "Now that he is gone, they won't have anyone to provide for them, and they'll starve to death. Worse still, thanks to them, Quinton wasn't able to marry Bria."

"It's just as well that he never wedded her, since she is a cheeky flirt who would have brought him nothing but heartache by spending the night in other men's beds before their first year together was over," commented Wyldon. Owen opened his mouth to retort, but was cut off as his knightmaster plowed on, "As for his family, they will be attended to."

"They will, sir?" stuttered Owen.

"I've had him promoted posthumously, so that his family will get a small commission every year," Lord Wyldon explained. "It's not the best way to get to be a corporal, but it's not the worst way, either. The worst way is when you start out as a sergeant."

"I didn't know that you would do something like that, my lord," mumbled Owen, shaking his head in amazement.

"Yes, I suspect that you thought that the Stump was incapable of compassion," Lord Wyldon pronounced dryly. "I imagine that you envisioned that I could not really care about anyone and so could not really feel pain about someone's passing. You forgot that I am older than you. I have seen more than you, Owen. I have loved more people than you. I have hated more individuals than you. I have killed more beings than you. I have experienced more guilt and grief than you." For a second that contained an eternity, Wyldon's eyes locked on his squire's before he finished, "I know all about the sort of pain that grows too big for some people, who allow themselves to be eaten by the darkness to escape from the agony. Although I could have fled into the darkness, I never did. No, I continue to care and suffer for it, but you believe you can teach me about pain?"

"I…I'm sorry, sir—I didn't think. Still, what if they're right?" Owen cried out in anguish, any of the faith he had displayed in the gods when he had written to Margarry having vanished in the wake of Quinton's death. "What if everything really is dark? What if we just are born to suffer and die? What if we endure pain blindly, trying to find a reason for our suffering? What if we're just fooling ourselves and there is nothing to hope for? What if there is nothing but the stars, the black space between them, and a world that is indifferent to whether we live or die?"

"Let's say your theory is true. What difference does it make?" Wyldon arched an inquisitive eyebrow in his direction.

"What difference does it make?" echoed Owen. "It makes all the difference in the world!"

"No, you are as wrong as can be," Wyldon corrected him sternly. "At the end of the day, it doesn't matter at all."

"You're a conservative," frowned Owen. "Aren't you supposed to be telling me to believe in Mithros and everything no matter what?"

"Believe whatever makes you a better person. If your theory is correct, if there is no plan, no fate, no destiny, and no providence, then there is only our choices left. Some allow themselves to be eaten by the darkness, and others fight it." Suddenly, Wyldon's hand clasped Owen's shoulder in a grip that managed to be both firm and gentle. "To be an adult is to face the truth and pick a side. Choose to give off light or darkness. Decide to be a candle or the night, but pick."

"I choose to be light even if I can't be good all the time," declared Owen immediately.

"I thought you would say that. That's why I chose you to be my squire." Wyldon offered a short nod of approval, then added, "Return to your room now and pack."

"Pack, my lord?" repeated Owen, who was certain he had misheard.

"Are you a parrot? Yes, pack, or put your belongings in suitcases so that we can leave here tomorrow to take command of Lord Raoul's as yet unnamed fort, so that he and Mindelan can ride south to Corus in time for her Ordeal."

At his knightmaster's words, Owen flinched. Although he had not forgotten that Kel, Neal, Seaver, and Merric would be taking their Ordeals this Midwinter, he liked to shove it out of his mind as much as possible, since it had the unfortunate side effect of making him bite his nails.

Spotting his reaction, Wyldon said, "You needn't worry for your friend, Owen. The Chamber draws out the dark in everyone, but it only destroys those with more darkness inside them than light. If anything, Keladry suffers from an excess of light. The Chamber will torment her, but it will not break her like it did Joren and Vinson. Now go."

"Yes, sir." Bowing, Owen pivoted and departed. Of course Lord Wyldon was right, he whispered to himself. Keladry was a great warrior and a moral person. If she didn't deserve to be a knight, then nobody did.


	14. Chapter 14

Author's Note: This chapter is rather short, but it is kind of sweet, and it is my celebration of the fact that my Art History class was cancelled, and I had nothing else I had to do in that hour and a half. (Let freedom ring!) Hopefully, you guys (observe the fact that I have not been in the South long enough to say "y'all" yet) will find something enjoyable in it, even if it is brief.

Disclaimer: I am not yet psychotic enough to harbor the delusion that I am Tamora Pierce, but check in with me again next week to see if I am still that sane…

Midwinter Surprises

When Owen, Lord Wyldon, and the squad of soldiers that had accompanied them as guard arrived at Lord Raoul's as yet unnamed fort, they discovered that it was also in a ramshackle state of half-construction that was not at all suitable to confront the elements of the harsh northern winter.

Immediately, Lord Wyldon took steps to deal with this issue. When the soldiers weren't on patrol, they were building barracks alongside the Company of the King's Own that remained stationed here, awaiting reassignment. Owen himself found his time split between performing chores for his knightmaster and aiding in the constructing of the barracks. It was during one of his stints as a builder that he met Dom and his squad.

Owen had been delegated to join them as they hammered a wall into place by the head carpenter, and he had barely started to whack a nail into place when a merry voice informed him, "You're holding that hammer incorrectly, you know."

"Obviously, I don't know, or else I wouldn't be doing it, would I?" an annoyed Owen muttered, turning around to face a sergeant in the King's Own whose vibrant blue eyes were gleaming at him in a demonic fashion. Here was someone who plainly delighted in tormenting others. Yet, despite of that, Owen sensed no real hostility from the young man. There was something good-natured about his taunting that rendered it completely non-abusive and altogether not nearly as offensive as it could have been. Even if it defied logic, Owen thought that he liked this sergeant and his twinkling eyes. After all, it was rare enough to stumble across a being that was upbeat along the Scanran border, so he may as well cultivate the acquaintance of one of them for as long as he was able…

"Ah, so there is a person about here whose brain hasn't given way entirely to brawn—that's wonderful to know." The sergeant offered the simple, contented grin of a man fulfilled. The smile still firmly etched on his cheeks, he added, "I'll provide you with a basic overview of the proper technique for hammering in a nail, shall I?"

Without waiting for a response from Owen, he continued, "Anyway, to set a nail in place, hold the hammer midway up the handle and use light to medium taps from about a six-inch distance. Once the nail is set, lower your grip a tad, for the trick to driving a nail in efficiently is to clutch the hammer about two inches from the base. That's the grip that will allow you maximum swinging force."

"Oh, that makes sense," murmured Owen, following the sergeant's directions as best he could. "How did you learn all this?"

"You pick up on a lot of useful carpentry tidbits when you help build homes for refugees with the Own and that sort of thing," the sergeant explained cheerily. Eyeing Owen critically, he pronounced, "You're certainly doing better than Kel. She would have smashed four of her fingers in by now."

"You know Kel?" Owen nearly bashed his finger as he gawked at the man.

"I do indeed," the sergeant confirmed, nodding. "I'm Domitan of Masbolle, and I presume that you are her buddy, Owen of Jesslaw, squire to Lord Wyldon. My friends call me Dom. Whether or not you want to take the risk of being my friend is entirely up to you."

"Kel told me about you!" exclaimed Owen. "You're Neal's cousin."

"My relationship to Meathead is not normally something I bring up in polite conversation, but, yes, however much it humiliates me to admit it, I am related to Nealan of Queenscove," Dom commented, sighing with mock regret. "I suppose I am going to have to begin referring to him as Sir Meathead soon once he passes his Ordeal and costs me five golden crowns."

"Why should he cost you five golden crowns if he passes his Ordeal?" Owen frowned, as he finished hammering in a nail and positioned another one for knocking into place.

"I bet that Lady Alanna would murder him because of his impertinent tongue before he completed his Ordeal," confided Dom, somberly shaking his head, and Owen couldn't quite figure out if he was jesting or in earnest."I really should have learned my lesson when I gambled that Lord Wyldon would kill Neal before he ever reached the exalted rank of squire. Clearly, I must develop more faith in my commanding officers."

"Do you have confidence in Lord Raoul?" Owen wanted to know.

"Of course," declared Dom, casually whacking in a nail. "He's a fine commander who doesn't make dumb mistakes, and he's one of the best warriors in the realm. He bagged himself another giant just before he and Kel traveled south to Corus for her Ordeal. Did you hear about that?"

"I heard the army's version of it, yes," Owen answered.

"That's the only one worth hearing," chuckled Dom over the pounding of their hammers on nails. "If it hasn't been embellished on several times, then it is too boring to hold anyone's interest. Anyway, it's because he killed another giant that we named this miserable mudpit Fort Giantkiller in homage to him."

"But if you named the fortress in honor of him, why didn't you do so before he left?" demanded a bewildered Owen.

"We didn't since we didn't want Lord Raoul to change it in a fit of modesty," Dom reasoned.

"Isn't it cruel to honor him in that manner if he doesn't like it?"

"No, it isn't. After all, nobody who deserves honor is eager to receive it, and those who are quivering with impatience to get accolades rarely warrant them. In my opinion, it is a far worse offense to pay homage to someone who doesn't deserve it then to shove somebody who is too humble to love the limelight into it for once when they have earned it," countered Dom.

"I see you're as much a master of riddles as Neal is," observed Owen, shaking his head as he absorbed his companion's logic.

"I like to think that I'm better than him," Dom snorted.

"Based on your lack of humility, I suppose that I'm intended to conclude that you are not deserving of any honors if your previous statements are true," snickered Owen, who felt that he rather enjoyed carpentry as long as he was working with people whom it was a fun experience to converse with.

"There are exceptions to every rule, and I'm the living one to the principle that I just outlined," Dom retorted, hammering away.

"That's highly convenient," scoffed Owen.

Silence fell between them, broken only by the steady banging of their tools, before Dom commented, "Well, Kel defeating an iron monster with only my squad for backup was almost as impressive as Lord Raoul vanquishing the giant, if you ask me."

"You were with Kel when she beat the monster?" Owen gaped at Dom. In his astonishment, he actually hit his finger. Cursing, he rubbed it as he listened to Dom describe the fight against the monster. As he heard about the battle, his eyes widened and he forgot about the wall he was supposed to be erecting. Judging by the absence of the smacking of metal against metal, Dom and his squad had ceased their labors as well, all of them entangled in the sticky spiderweb of an enthralling tale.

When Dom finally finished describing the conflict, they all returned to reality with a bump. Exchanging quick guilty glances, they returned to their work. However, they had barely resumed it when a trumpet sang out from the ramparts.

"That's odd," remarked Dom, his forehead knotting. "That note is used to denote the arrival of allies, but it's not time for a patrol shift yet."

"Perhaps it's a courier or a train of supply wagons," suggested one of Dom's corporals.

"Perhaps," Dom agreed. "Well, we'll soon find out, since we aren't going anywhere."

"That's true; we're definitely stuck here for the time being," grumbled Dom's other corporal dourly.

Fortunately, they did not have long to wait, for about half an hour later, there was a rumble as the drawbridge swung open. Then, as Owen, Dom, and his squad along with the other soldiers toiling to construct the barracks stared at the gates, a coach bearing the Cavall coat of arms raced inside.

As everyone present gave a collective gasp, a footman opened the door of the carriage, bowed, and outstretched his hand. Accepting the proffered hand, Lady Vivenne alighted from the coach as gracefully as if she had entered the courtyard of the Royal Palace rather than a half-built citadel. On her heels followed Margarry, who glanced about her curiously, obviously trying to take in everything around her at once.

At the sight of her, all the breath exploded out of Owen's lungs as if he had just been walloped in the stomach. Indeed, it seemed as though he had been. Mithros, she was much prettier than he remembered, and it suddenly occurred to him how sweaty and dirty he was by comparison. Now that she had spotted him in such disarray, there was no way that Margarry would want anything to do with him. In fact, he would be lucky if she didn't flee from him, shrieking in terror at his ugliness.

"Did you know Lord Wyldon's wife and daughter were coming?" Dom whispered in his ear.

"No," Owen hissed back. Abruptly, he was infuriated at both Margarry and Wyldon for not warning him that she was going to visit her father, because if he had known she was coming, he would have made himself presentable as Kel had taught him to do.

Still numb from beholding Margarry again after so many months of separation, Owen beseeched any of the listening gods and goddesses that she would not recognize him. Unfortunately for him, either there were no deities listening for prayers or else none of them were feeling particularly merciful at the moment, because she did recognize him. Worse still, she smiled and strode over to him, as he stood as motionless as a statue, his hammer still clutched in his hand as though it were something valuable that he was afraid to release.

"I didn't know you were coming." Owen's mouth announced that it was working as she reached him. A half second after he realized that it was functioning, he wished fervently that it wasn't, because that was not what he had intended to say to her when he finally got an opportunity to meet her again in person. In fact, nothing about their reunion was transpiring as he had envisioned when he daydreamed about it. "Neither you nor your father told me."

"Father didn't know we were coming," Margarry educated him, her cheeks coloring with more than just the chill of the air engulfing them all. The crimson splotches on her face now reminded him of roses, and she certainly smelled like that flower with all the rosewater she wore. Indeed, her scent combined with the warmth he felt whenever she was near almost convinced him that it was springtime again. "He never wants Mother or any of us girls to call on him here, since he thinks it is too dangerous, but he doesn't have a chance to specifically forbid it if she doesn't inform him when she's going to come. Once she's here, he can hardly refuse to see her, as that would be most impolite. Besides, he loves her too much to push her away once she is her in person. Perhaps all women are foul temptresses, after all, like the Mithran priests claim."

"And you couldn't write to me that you were coming, because he reads your letters to me." Owen guessed where she was going and established it first.

"Exactly," Margarry affirmed, bobbing her head in agreement, so that her long dark hair bounced in a sensual wave against her periwinkle cape.

However, before she or Owen could say anything more to each other, her mother called from across the courtyard, "Lady Margarry, are you planning on being a good, dutiful daughter and visiting your dear father with me or not?"

"That's the sort of inquiry that there's only one correct answer to," stated Margarry, her scarlet lips twisting upward wryly. "Well, I had better go before Mother gets her hackles up any more, but I sincerely hope that I'll be able to talk more with you later, Squire Owen."

Before Owen could unstick his tongue from the roof of his mouth long enough to voice a passionate agreement, she had curtsied, pivoted, and sailed off after her mother, not sparing him a second glance. As he watched her disappear into the administrative building where Wyldon's study was housed, he wondered vaguely what he would discuss with Margarry if he was lucky enough to chat with her again before she departed with her mother.

Oh, well, he would cross that hurdle when he got to it, he consoled himself as he resumed his hammering. After all, there was no profit in borrowing trouble when he had enough already.


	15. Chapter 15

Author's Note: Hopefully, you will all approve of my explanation for Margarry's and Vivenne's appearance. Feel free to let me know by reviewing. (I am such a subtle hinter, huh?)

Babies and Roses

That evening Owen found himself in his knightmaster's study with Lord Wyldon, Lady Vivenne, and Margarry. Surprisingly enough, Lord Wyldon had decided to put aside his paperwork and battle plans for the night and was instead talking with his wife by the roaring fire. Even more alarmingly, he had granted his squire free time as well, and, naturally, Owen had elected to spend it all with Margarry. His choice to spend all his time off with Margarry explained why he was seated beside her on the floor a bit further away from the cackling flames in the fireplace, his eyes riveted on her fingers as she sketched.

"That's not a very wintry picture," he observed bluntly, as he watched a rose take shape on her paper.

"Be careful, Squire Owen. Roses always have thorns," she advised him tersely, obviously interpreting his words as an insult.

"I'm not saying that the drawing is_ bad_," Owen faltered, trying to placate her and defend himself simultaneously, and probably failing in both endeavors as a result. "It just puzzles me that you would do a work of art about spring when it's so close to Midwinter."

"Well, if it bewilders you, it must be good artwork. After all, all artwork, however lovely on the surface, is like a rose in that it contains something disconcerting and ambiguous like a thorn," concluded Margarry, her lips quirking wryly like rosebuds themselves, as she added thorns to the rose in her picture. Spotting the increased confusion on his features, she relented. "Owen, I never illustrate wintry scenes. I do a lot of pieces on spring, some on summer, the occasional one on autumn, but never any on winter. Winter is all about coldness and death, and, frankly, I witness enough of that in the real world without examining it again in art. Besides, drawing images of spring in the winter is my way of promising myself that spring will come again."

"Oh." As Owen contemplated this, he watched her sketch butterflies around the rose. Then, when he felt that he had reflected on her comment long enough, he pointed out, "Winter isn't all bad, Margarry. There's Midwinter, remember."

"You and I won't be attending any balls or banquets this year, though," Margarry countered. "There's scant joy in a holiday if you don't have the opportunity to really celebrate it."

"I think it's jolly that I won't be attending balls and banquets," answered Owen, shrugging. "If I were going to any, I'd just end up serving food and drinks to ungracious knights and ladies."

"And I suppose I should regard the fact that I am released from the convent for Midwinter as gift enough," Margarry sighed. "Indeed, I would if I didn't feel like I was headed somewhere worse."

"Are you getting married?" Owen stammered. Surely, Margarry would have told him about something like that in a letter, but what else could she perceive as more horrible than the convent?

"No, no," she reassured him quickly, and both relief and bemusement coursed through him. "I'm just going to tend to the daughter of my mother's sister as she gives birth to her first child." Biting her lip, Margarry continued, "Adaira, the woman I'm going to care for in her childbirth, lives in a fief near the Scanran border, which is why Mother and I decided to visit Father on our way there. Anyway, I am terrified of seeing my cousin go into labor. I know childbirth is a bloody and agonizing experience so dreadful that no man is strong enough to be present for it, yet I think I could deal with it if I wasn't aware that—"

Here, Margarry trailed off and stared down at her drawing, which she had ceased working on when she had begun discussing childbirth. For an awkward moment, Owen waited for her to complete her thought. When she didn't, he prodded gingerly, "If you weren't aware of what, Margarry?"

Clearly on tenterhooks, Margarry glanced over at her mother. Apparently satisfied that Lady Vivenne was too busy knitting a daisy-colored blanket and too engrossed in her own exchange with Lord Wyldon to be listening to Margarry's conversation with Owen, she whispered, "If I didn't understand that pregnancy is difficult for Mother's family. My maternal grandmother conceived nine children of which four died in the womb and two perished within a week of being born. She herself died of childbed fever with the second baby who passed away shortly after being born. My mother's sister gave birth to three dead boys out of the five babies she conceived. As for my mother…"

At this juncture, Margarry ascertained that neither of her parents were eavesdropping before lowering her voice even further as she went on, "She gave birth to my two older sisters, but then after my second eldest sister was born, she birthed a stillborn child. The healers, knowing her family history and that she was aging, advised her against getting pregnant again."

"Then how in the name of Mithros were you born?" Owen demanded, astonished.

"In the usual way, I assure you," she informed him dryly. "When Father heard what the healers said, he told her to wear an amulet so she couldn't conceive another child. She lied to him one night, though, and claimed that she had the anti-pregnancy necklace on when she didn't, and, well, according to her, I was the result."

"Lord Wyldon must have been furious when he found out what your mother had done," Owen remarked, grimacing as he envisioned his knightmaster's reaction to learning about Margarry's conception.

"Oh, Mother says he was angrier than she had ever seen him before, and he wanted her to take a potion to terminate the pregnancy," murmured Margarry, flushing. "However, Mother refused to do so. You see, he loved her so much that he wished to ensure that she remained alive, and, if she continued with the pregnancy, he was afraid that she would die. I think his problem was that she loved him, too, and she wanted to fulfill a wife's ultimate duty to her husband and give him a son. Mother insisted that he never reproached her for not providing him with one, but she could always tell that he desired one, and who could blame him? After all, every man wishes for a son to carry on the family name, to teach to fight and ride a horse, and just to be his pride and joy. Even mothers want sons. Nobody wants a daughter, nonetheless three of them. I must have been a real disappointment to them, especially when I was born sickly, and the healers all feared that I would die and take Mother with me."

"But you didn't," Owen reminded her, his voice as hushed as hers. Impulsively, he reached out o clutch her hand, which was both strong and tender. An instant later, he recalled himself and pulled his palm away from hers as though she had scalded him, although the memory of her smooth flesh beneath him would remain forever, he was certain.

"Yes, I lived and so did Mother," confirmed Margarry softly. "When Anwen would still talk, she told me that Father spent every waking hour on his knees praying for the survival of his wife and his newest daughter. Perhaps the gods and goddesses took pity on him and permitted us both to recover, or maybe we simply weren't slated to perish yet, and his prayers did nobody any good, anyway. All I know is that ever since then Father has been very indulgent of every whim of my mother or mine. He always cared about her, but after he saw how easy it was to lose her, I bet he became obsessed with showing his affection more. Similarly, he loves all his daughters, but I am the one whose life was almost over before it started and the one who he wanted to kill in the womb, so I think he forever feels like there is something he has to make up for with me."

Before Owen's stunned brain could devise a response to anything she had confided in him, she switched the topic back to the present briskly, "Anyway, it's because my mother's line is prone to hard pregnancies that I fear to care for my cousin in labor, because I am petrified that my cousin, her baby, or both will perish before my eyes. Worse still, I am horrified at the idea that I might have to watch them suffer before they go, because deaths during childbirth are seldom pleasant ways to go."

"If you're so scared, don't go," Owen suggested, swallowing as he imagined all the gruesome deaths that could occur during labor.

"I must." Margarry shook her head, her expression resolute. "A lady must know how to tend for other women in childbirth, and, besides, if I want to have anyone to care for me during my labor, I have to aid others."

"You want children, then," Owen noted. Suddenly, he pictured Margarry surrounded by little boys and girls—children with a mixture of her features and his—and discovered that he wasn't as terrified at the prospect of having offspring as he had thought he would be. After all, if he was the father of Margarry's children, then he would have to sleep with her, and that was a happy notion, not a sad one. Of course, with his control over his mouth, it was probably not a smart idea to think such things, he reminded himself.

"Of course I want children," Margarry agreed, returning to her artwork and drawing an apple tree. "Every woman longs to give birth, because her offspring are her only means of immortality. Furthermore, every female is taught to believe that she has failed in life if she doesn't bring another person into this world, and basic programming can be astonishingly hard to overcome. Besides, there is a part of me that really thirsts to look down at a baby and know that I created it and it is mine to nourish. I think like my mother I wouldn't mind dying if I knew my baby would live."

"I don't want you to die," stuttered Owen, his eyes agog. "If you die, then I would perish of sorrow."

"How romantic." Margarry's face and tone were inscrutable as she established as much.

"It's not romantic; it's tragic," he hissed. "You can't just go dying without considering the people you'll leave behind. If you love people, you don't just go risking your life without thinking about those who'll mourn you."

"So it's okay for men to allow themselves to be speared in battle all the time, but a lady should never distress her husband by dying in childbirth?" Margarry demanded icily, her eyebrows arching. "Men can decide to pass away on their wives whenever they want, but a woman's mind is too inferior to allow her to do so?"

"You know that's not what I'm saying," Owen burst out through clenched teeth, struggling to keep his voice down so that Lord Wyldon wouldn't notice their disagreement.

"Then what are you saying, Squire Owen?" Margarry's manner was no milder. "I'm obviously too thick to comprehend without you spelling it out for me."

"It's a man's duty to go into battle if he's a knight or something," he educated her irritably, miffed that she would imagine that any soldier wished to do, especially when he thought about Quinton.

"And it's a woman's duty to give birth to children," Margarry reminded him. "If it's acceptable for a man to die doing his duty, then the same should hold true when a female perishes under the same circumstances."

"My mind agrees with you, but my heart doesn't," mumbled Owen, burying his head in his hands. Mithros, he loved Margarry, and he certainly didn't want her to die, but he had no business telling her what she could and couldn't do. Equals didn't engage in that sort of behavior, and she was nothing less than his equal. Thus, he had a right to express his opinion, but it was up to her to determine what she wished to do. It was then that he realized that the greatest challenge in loving was in letting go. Only if you truly loved someone could you grant them their independence.

"The heart and the mind are never in agreement. That is why most of us spend our lives in misery," declared Margarry. This time, it was she who reached out and grasped his hand in her own. The gesture comforted him tremendously, and he found that almost all the knots that had formed in his stomach unraveled. Locking her eyes on his, she informed him somberly, "I don't want you to die, either, Owen, but I let you go into battle."

"I'll let you have your babies if you want," he responded, his mouth feeling as moist as a desert in August.

"Good, because what you wrote about marriage in your last note to me was rather sweet." Margarry's features broke into a grin that was almost coy, even though Owen wasn't positive that he desired for anything of his to be regarded as sweet. Still, on a whole, it was preferable for her to call him sweet rather than argue with him.

"That got through to you?" Owen asked, shocked, as he had suspected that Wyldon would do away with all the references to marriages.

"Well, Father did cross those bits out, which must have satisfied the incompetent priestess censors, but I can read through lines of ink," clarified Margarry, shrugging. "Maybe the fact that he merely crossed the references out indicates that he isn't completely opposed to the idea."

"I won't dare to hope that."

"Neither will I. Tragedies never are so painful if the hero and the heroine don't convince themselves that 'happily ever after' could ever apply to them," Margarry commented, hovering between darkness and levity. After that, she leaned toward him, and his nostrils were overwhelmed with the sugary aroma of rosewater. Then, every nerve in his face launched into immediate sensory overload as she brushed her lips lightly against his cheek. It wasn't exactly a kiss, yet it was close enough to cause Owen to fear that he would faint, no matter how weak and unromantic that would be.

For what must have only been a second, but felt like a blissful eternity, she rested her delicate lips against his cheek. Before either of them could do anything else, though, two sharp voices originating from by the fire hollered, "Margarry! What are you doing?"

"I thought that Squire Owen had something in his eye, but upon closer inspection, it turned out that my eyes were deceiving me, and it was merely a trick of the light," Margarry lied. Totally unabashed, she drew away from Owen and focused an innocent gaze on her parents.

"While compassion is a critical virtue in a lady, a woman should always be mindful of her reputation, my daughter," chided Lady Vivenne. "A true lady constantly remembers that an excessive proximity to males, especially unmarried ones, is detrimental to her good name, which is all she really owns and therefore should treasure the most. I am grateful that we are leaving tomorrow morning before you can engage in any more scandalous behavior."

"Of course, Mother." Somehow, Margarry managed to sound both contrite and bored at the same time, and Owen wondered vaguely how she achieved this briefly before all thought was stripped from his mind as Lord Wyldon glared at him.

"As for you, Squire Owen, I expect you to appreciate the fact that keeping your hands to yourself isn't just a nursery rule--- it is one that should be followed into adulthood in polite conversation," stipulated Wyldon, staring at Owen with such intensity that his squire suspected that he could see everything inside him and didn't approve of what he saw. As Owen almost swallowed his tongue, his knightmaster concluded, "You should also bear in mind that this rule is particularly important to abide by in front of young ladies' fathers."

"Yes, my lord," Owen affirmed, willing to agree to just about anything in the hopes that doing so would prompt his knightmaster to direct his penetrating gaze elsewhere.

After that, the evening lost its comfortable quality, and it wasn't long before the assembled divided, all retreating to their own bedrooms to sleep.


	16. Chapter 16

Reviews: To read is human; to review is divine.

Author's Note: The homes to which "fallen women" are sent to are inspired by the Magdalene Laundries or Magdalene Asylums that were run by the Roman Catholic Church and were socially accepted institutions up until the latter half of the twentieth century. (The last Magdalene Laundry closed on September 25, 1996.) Women would be sent to these institutions often against their will and forced to work in appalling conditions until the day that they died, and they could be sent there for the reasons outlined in this fic. However, I have taken the liberty of moving them from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to the medieval era.

Remembrances and Protectors

The next morning Owen was on his way to breakfast when he ran into Margarry on the ramparts. "Oh, good, there you are," she remarked, grinning as he fell into step beside her. "I hoped that I would be able to see you again before Mother and I departed."

"I wanted to see you again, too," Owen admitted, flushing, although he prayed that she would attribute his crimson cheeks to the chill of the air blowing against their faces as they crossed the ramparts.

"Naturally, though, I couldn't call on you in your rooms, because a woman who is caught in a man's bedchamber too early in the morning or too late at night is bound to get in trouble," continued Margarry, her expression changing from merry to grim in a heartbeat. "After all, everyone knows that even the suspected sexual misconduct by females is punished far more severely than actual and proven sexual misconduct by men."

"You didn't seem particularly worried about that last night," he commented, remembering how she had kissed him.

"That was before Mother told me about the so-called 'charity homes' in the cities that women can be sent to if they aren't considered chaste enough," she educated him darkly. "That was before I learned that none of the women in those places in the cities that are intended to reform prostitutes are ever released, so the institutions are hardly reformatories. That was before I heard that most of the urban women who are sent there are not prostitutes at all really, just unmarried women with babies, victims of rape, and girls perceived as too promiscuous or dangerously pretty. Most of them haven't done anything wrong, and none of them have done anything so terrible that they deserve to be sentenced to a life of dreamless drudgery, cleaning other people's laundry all day in absolute silence."

"I thought King Jonathan and Queen Thayet were progressives. How can they let that sort of thing go on?" gasped Owen.

"Because the truth about the 'charity houses' isn't well known," replied Margarry tightly. "They are only found in the cities, and they put up a charming façade of virtue, so nobody questions them. After all, if they are run by the priestesses of the Mother Goddess, they must be good."

"But they aren't," he established vehemently. "They're evil and misnamed. There's nothing charitable about them."

"Yes, they are evil, and if I were ever sent to one—"

"You won't be!" shouted Owen, horrified at the notion.

"If I were sent there, I would kill myself," she announced, her lips setting grimly as she went on without acknowledging that he had spoke. "I would refuse to live in such misery. I don't care if the Mother Goddess and Mithros say that suicide is a major sin. If the Goddess really was charitable, she would take pity on a girl who had to escape a prison as dreadful as that and she would be furious about the savagery women commit against other females in her name. If Mithros were really just, he would give someone who endured such abuse peace if he couldn't intervene to save them while they were alive."

"You would not need to kill yourself, Margarry," he told her, grabbing her gloved hand impulsively and relieved to feel its solid wool-covered presence in his palm. "I would come and rescue you. Besides, your mother and your father won't send you there. Your mother was just trying to scare you into good behavior."

"Maybe, but the priestesses at the convent also have the power to send women they judge as sexually impure to the ironically named 'charity houses' as well," sighed Margarry. "Mother told me that a girl she knew at the convent when she was training to be a lady was expelled from the convent and sent, wailing, to a city 'charity home' when she was caught kissing a stable lad on the cheek—not even on the lips. Of course, the boy she kissed was a commoner, and she was a noble. That sort of thing matters. After all, a noble might marry a noble, but a commoner could never wed a noble any more than a man can marry a donkey. Marriage makes everything all right and transforms the dirty into the sacred."

"Let's not talk about marriage," Owen stammered. Such a discussion would just make him imagine how wonderful it would be if he could wed Margarry, but such a scenario would only be feasible years from now at best. At the very least, he couldn't marry Margarry until he was knighted…

"Yes, it's such a depressing topic," agreed Margarry, and Owen couldn't decide if she was mocking him or the notion of matrimony in general. Before he could ask, she elaborated, "Actually, the future as a whole is a rather dispiriting subject. When you discuss it, you can't help but create a million little fantasies that you know won't come true even as you expound on them, and when you aren't doing that, you're examining how much worse life is going to be soon. No, let's focus on the now. Now we are together, and that's enough for me. Still, like any foolish young maiden, I wish to be able to make time stop for us. Since I know I can't do that, I'll settle for ensuring that you remember this moment--- and me—forever."

As she made this assertion, she fumbled around in her cloak pocket for a moment, withdrew the picture she had sketched last evening, and thrust it into his hands. Fire blazed through Owen as he accepted her present, and he confessed, "I haven't got a gift for you."

"That's fine." Margarry shrugged. "I don't need a remembrance from you. It's always men who forget their women, not the other way around."

Before Owen could point out that it was unfair that she had provided him with more gifts than he had her, his mind was wiped free from this comment as Margarry stepped onto a patch of black ice, and her heels slipped. He reached out to steady her, but he couldn't even grab her, because her arms waved like windmills as she fought frantically to restore her balance. A second later, she smashed onto the stones.

"Are you all right?" he demanded, as he knelt beside her.

"It's just my ankle," she whispered, her eyes wide and watery as she gazed at him, her hand tenderly rubbing her left ankle. "Now I'm a real fallen woman, I suppose."

"Did it go click when you fell?" Owen pressed, grimacing as he recalled his own experience with a broken ankle.

"No," Margarry ground out, still stroking her ankle.

"I don't think it's broken, then," he reassured her. Acting on a sudden surge of inspiration, he snatched a handful of snow from the top of the rampart, adding, "The coldness of the snow might help you feel better."

Knowing that it probably violated all the rules of propriety, he leaned forward and packed the snow around the ankle Margarry had bared when she was massaging it. Even if the action itself wasn't inappropriate, the shock of lightening that jolted through him at the sensation of her smooth flesh under his palm probably rendered it so.

Oh, well, he thought, as he placed another handful of snow about Margarry's ankle. He had never been the sort of person who considered the social acceptability of his actions before he moved, and now that he had acted, it didn't make sense to halt midway through. Always, he followed the dictates of his heart, not his mind. A moment ago, his heart had told him quite clearly that he would have been a monster if he saw someone nursing an injured ankle and did nothing to help them when he knew from experience how agonizing that could be.

However, an instant later, he was convinced he had made the wrong decision when a voice called out, "Margarry and Owen! What in the name of Mithros do you two think you're doing?"

Reflexively, Owen and Margarry craned their heads to look in the direction from which the shout had originated and saw an ashen-faced Lord Wyldon marching toward them. Cringing, Owen backed away from Margarry and wondered what the odds of him successfully convincing his knightmaster that he had never touched his daughter were. Given the fact that he was probably Tortall's lamest liar, he calculated that they were slightly below one in a million, which meant that he was definitely going to be murdered in a very gruesome fashion within the next five minutes. Well, life had been good while it lasted, except for the parts with Master Oakbridge and overprotective fathers…

"Relax, Father," Margarry answered placatingly. "I skidded on a patch of ice and fell. When I fell, I hurt my ankle, and Owen was just putting snow on it to make it feel better."

"I see, and with his extensive training as a healer, my squire would of course be perfectly qualified to make such an assessment," Wyldon growled, bending over his child, brushing the snow off her ankle with gentleness at complete odds with his tone, and tugging down her dress again. "That is why he didn't hurry off to find a healer when you fell and hurt yourself in a fortress with several healers that hasn't seen any battles recently."

"He meant well, Father," Margarry reminded him firmly, "and he didn't hurt me."

Wyldon snorted and then snapped at Owen, "If you have any interest in assisting my daughter, go fetch a healer."

"I'm going, my lord." Instantly, Owen shoved himself to his feet and rushed off to the healers', traveling as fast as he dared over the ice. As he raced off, he heard Margarry arguing that she didn't need a healer, and Lord Wyldon telling her that she wasn't leaving the fort until she had her ankle examined by someone who knew what they were doing.


	17. Chapter 17

After Margarry and Lady Vivenne departed, Owen discovered that his days were suddenly rather empty. Of course, he was still expected to help Lord Wyldon with his mountains worth of paperwork (war actually entailed a lot more paperwork than Owen had previously supposed), but since all the barracks had been built, he no longer had to assist with their construction. Besides, there were no patrols in the winter, as the Scanrans wouldn't be attacking now. In many ways, the ice hadn't just frozen the ground-- it had frozen them all in their forts until it thawed.

Until then, Owen had to fill his free hours somehow. He chose to do so by visiting the refugees that had piled into the fortress after the Scanrans had raided their villages. The barracks where the refugees resided were crammed with far too many people who had been forced to live on top of each other for far too long, a fact that was apparent to anyone who wasn't blind who deigned to enter the barracks.

Walking into the barracks was always a multisensory assault for Owen. First, his nose would be overwhelmed by the combined odors of sweat, rarely washed human, urine, and scorched food. Of course, these stenches might have been alleviated somewhat if the barracks had glass windows that could be opened to permit fresh air to permeate the structure. However, the building had been built far too rapidly and with far too cheap materials for that, having only animal skin coverings over the windows, which permitted light to enter the barracks in streams that resembled accusatory fingers, but did not let fresh air in, no matter how much it was needed.

Then, once Owen's nose had adjusted to the overpowering smells, his ears had to adapt to the din that always engulfed the place at any time of day or night. In the barracks, it seemed like everyone was conducting their business with as much noise as possible. Women sang and gossiped as they sewed and cooked, or raged at each other for infringing on their space for drying laundry. Men joked as they repaired their tools or shouted insults at each other for stealing one another's belongings. Teenagers giggled as they flirted with members of the opposite sex and fought with members of the same gender over who got which member of the opposite sex. Squealing, rambunctious children raced around, laughing and getting under everyone's feet, or screamed at each other for not sharing what few toys the refugees had. Babies wailed at their families for not paying them enough attention. The only common thread in all this mess was the chaos and the babble itself, which was why Owen nursed the strong suspicion that a vast majority of nobles would have paid a considerable amount of golden crown to avoid visiting a barracks like this.

Yet, Owen wasn't like most nobles. He liked visiting the barracks. Even though the crowded room stank worse than a group of Stormwings, all the beings trapped together inside while snow accumulated outside made him feel warm. Apart from that, he discovered that the refugees knew almost as many ballads and folk stories as the soldiers did, and most of them were new songs and tales that he had never heard before. Besides, in some indefinable but powerful sense, he felt like the barracks were home to him, because, since the refugees had been ousted out of their own villages, they welcomed anyone who was willing to help with the chores into their fold.

Owen was willing to sharpen knives, clean vegetables, or perform other useful tasks in exchange for hearing a story while he worked. One man whom he was particularly fond of working with was Saefas Plowman, who had been a trapper in his village and who was happy to show Owen how to skin animals properly while he told tales about his experiences tracking beasts in the forest.

That was why, a little more than a week after Margarry had departed, he was to be found sitting in the barracks on the floor next to Saefas, skinning a rabbit while he listened to Saefas' account of how he had successfully tracked and killed a bear single-handedly.

"I don't believe you," he announced once Saefas' tale had reached its dramatic climax with Saefas doing away with the bear with a blow from a cooking pot.

"Aye, ye say that now, but ye believed me well enough when I was tellin' the story, and yer eyes were as wide as an ocean," replied Saefas. "That's the magic of a story, Owen. A good story makes ye believe something that ain't true. Most memorable stories are just brilliant illusions described by a master magician. Tellin' a good story is the only excuse for tellin' a lie."

"I don't know why I like stories so much, then, since I hate lying." Owen frowned, confused.

"Ye enjoy them because they are charged with excitement and adventure," answered Saefas, as he finished skinning a rabbit and started skinning another.

"I am at war," Owen argued, shaking his head. "How could I possibly need more adventure?"

"Aye, ye are at war, but ye haven't been doin' much fightin' at the moment," Saefas pointed out, as though he needed reminding of this fact. "Of course ye are bound to seek out some form of excitement if ye are used to havin' yer pulse pound. If anythin', the drive for adventure is goin' to be stronger in ye than in most people, since ye are accustomed to more action. For me, personally, I saw enough action the day that my village was burned by the Scanrans."

Seeing that Saefas' eyes were filled with a shadowy sadness that wasn't typical for him, Owen decided to change the subject by asking, "What are we skinning all these rabbits for anyway?"

"I'm makin' coats for the wee babies," Saefas informed him, his expression still more haunted than usual. "The chill and the disease that always circles in the winter carries off many babes, and I am not in the mood to be witnessin' any more deaths on a large scale if I can help it. In this case, I can. That's why I am not chargin' the mothers any money for these coats. I learned a lot about charity when my village was destroyed and no nobles us in, and I got to thinkin' that maybe Mithros was punishin' me for my selfishness by havin' my village raided."

"I don't think that's true," protested Owen instantly. "You're one of the kindest and most generous men that I've ever met, Saefas. It's not a crime to charge people money for doing your job. Besides, if Mithros was going around punishing people for their wickedness, I think the nobles who had refused to take you and the other refugees in would be the first to be raided instead. If you ask me, people suffer because humans delight in abusing others, fate is blind and strikes at anyone it gets a whim to, or because Mithros has a messed up sense of humor and tortures the greatest beings of all perhaps in the twisted hope that pain will make them grow even better. Those are the only reasons that people like Kel have to endure what they did."

"Who is Kel?" Saefas asked.

"Keladry of Mindelan," Owen educating, realizing with a start that the man really didn't know whom he was referring to. "She's a friend of mine, and she took her Ordeal of Knighthood this Midwinter. I thought everyone had heard of her. She was the first girl to go into page training after Lady Alanna, and nobody knew Lady Alanna was a girl when she began her training."

"News about the happenings at court ain't of much consequence in small villages in the middle of nowhere like the one I lived in all my life," chuckled Saefas. "Even if they were, we'd be years behind the times, since the roads to the north are so awful."

"Well, anyway, Kel is the best warrior that I ever met after Lord Wyldon," continued Owen, his face flushing with enthusiasm."She can unseat almost anyone in a joust, and she even stayed on when she jousted against Lord Wyldon, and everyone says that he is the greatest jouster in the realm. She defeated a metal monster that the Scanrans created with a squad of the King's Own a couple of weeks ago, and, before that, when she was a page, she led a group of us against a horde of bandits. We all were convinced that we were going to die, even Faleron, who was supposed to be in charge, but Kel didn't panic. No, she remained calm, and she told everyone what to do. Since she was so courageous and composed, she led us to victory. She isn't just a brilliant warrior, though. She's far more than that. She's a perfect knight, because she is kind to her servants like Gower and Lalassa, and she defends those who are weaker than her. When older pages hazed the new ones, she was the one who stood up for the younger pages even though my lord Wyldon yelled at her for it and gave her punishment work for fighting. Then, when her maidservant was kidnapped by Joren—he was a dirty bully who deserved to die during his Ordeal because he was as chivalrous as a bandit—she rescued her, even though she is afraid of heights and her maidservant was up in the Tower. No matter what people said about her being a girl and too weak to fight, she proved them wrong, and she never complained about what she suffered—"

Suddenly, he broke off as it hit him that silence had descended over the barracks. Bewildered, he glanced about him for the cause of their alarm and saw that Lord Wyldon had entered the building. Seemingly oblivious to the fact that everyone was gawking at him, Wyldon bent over to address a little girl with black smudges all over her cheeks and a rag doll clenched in her right fist. Gradually, as it dawned on those packing the barracks that Wyldon wasn't conducting an inspection or about to make a speech, chatter began to fill the room again. Watching his knightmaster speak to the girl as though she was the child of a close friend, Owen felt his jaw drop in astonishment.

This couldn't be occurring, nonetheless before his eyes. Lord Wyldon was obsessed with orderliness in both himself and others, so there was no way that he would treat a filthy girl with such compassion. Lord Wyldon was cold and always kept part of himself aloof, so how could he possibly so such warmth to a strange child? It made no sense. Of course, the man had always been inscrutable, so perhaps in its seeming incongruity, his actions were understandable, after all.

Dragging his eyes away from Wyldon, who was now talking to a couple whom Owen assumed was the girl's parents, he reverted his attention back to Saefas.

"I hope that I will be able meet this Kel ye speak of," remarked Saefas, as if there had been no interruption.

"She'll be coming up north to fight the Scanrans like everyone else once spring approaches, so you might," Owen reasoned. "Even if you don't, you'll hear about her exploits. Word spreads faster than disease in the army, and when you're in a fort, you can't help but hear the latest gossip if you aren't dead or passed out."

"I'm sure that I'll hear of her adventures if she is as good as ye claim," agreed Saefas.

"She's as good as I said," Owen promised. "Actually, she's better. My stories can't begin to do her justice. Sometimes stories tell the truth, after all, even if they don't describe it as well as the person telling it would like."

Their conversation went on in this manner until a half hour later when silence fell again as Lord Wyldon prepared to take his leave. He was about to stride out of the barracks when he tossed over his shoulder, "Jesslaw, if you come back to my office with me, I'll give you a letter I have for you."

Grinning at the idea of a note from Margarry, Owen bid farewell to Saefas and hurried out of the barracks, being careful not to trample anyone on his way out of the jammed structure. Once he had exited, he put on an extra burst of speed and managed to catch up with his knightmaster in a moment.

"You visited the refugees just to talk to them, sir," he panted as he reached the man, pouring out his amazement from earlier without a thought.

"As did you," Lord Wyldon returned dryly.

"But I am not the one accused someone else of confusing the commoners by acting like I was the same as them, sir," argued Owen, who remembered what had happened the night he had brawled with Quinton. He recollected everything that pertained to Quinton, and he suspected that he always would, even if he became senile. Certain things were imprinted into the mind too much for even senility to wipe clean.

"I told you that you were expected to display some class," Wyldon corrected, his stiff voice indicating that he did not appreciate being challenged by his own squire. "There's a difference between descending to someone else's level and showing charity to those below you. Nobles are supposed to care for the common people and give alms to the poor who recognize that the nobles are behaving compassionately toward those beneath them, and, thus, because both the nobles and the commoners know their places, the rules of class are not broken. Just because some lords in the north have forgotten their duty to tend to the poor, that doesn't mean we all have."

"Oh." Owen wasn't sure he understood this distinction, but he decided to change the subject by asking, "So you're going to let me keep writing to Margarry even after what happened, my lord?"

"I have determined that you meant well, like my daughter said, and that counts for something, although not much." Wyldon sounded as though it had required a team of wild horses to yank this concession out of him. "Since you didn't do her any harm, and since the healers did say that the snow would help reduce swelling in an emergency, I have forgiven you enough to allow you to correspond with Margarry still. However, I do wish that you would start thinking with your head, not your heart in tight situations, especially as I highly doubt that you knew that snow would reduce swelling when you dumped on my daughter's ankle."

Owen had no idea how to respond to all this. Fortunately for him, though, they had arrived at Lord Wyldon's study. Once they entered the office, Lord Wyldon strode over to his desk, snatched an envelope off it, and thrust it at his squire. Figuring that now was a time to quit while he was ahead, Owen accepted the envelope, bowed, and left the room, heading toward his bedchamber where he could read Margarry's latest epistle in private.

As soon as he reached his bedroom, Owen tore open the envelope and read:

_My dear Squire Owen,_

_I hope that this letter finds you doing as well as I am. It is my pleasure to announce to you that after a labor that was as easy as any can be claimed to be, my cousin Adaira has given birth to two twin boys. They are healthy and strong, according to the healers, and, although they are both still crimson-skinned and bald, I think they are very handsome. Even though they have no teeth, they look adorable smiling at me when I make odd faces at them, and I sweat that I could watch them swing their little fists at their rattles for hours. During my spare time, I have already started sewing a quilt to keep them warm during the long, cold winter. _

_Speaking of the winter, I confess that I don't hate it as much as I used to. Since I am helping to tend to my cousin after the ordeal of childbirth, I have an excuse to remain away from the convent for a few weeks. That has given me time to participate in many winter activities that I have forgotten how much I delighted in like skating and making snowmen. In many ways, the birth of Adaira's sons, whose names are Lucian and Uri, have prompted me to rediscover the child in me. _

_That is, I am remembering to appreciate the little joys in life that make it worth living, and I am starting to understand that the sun shines even on cloudy days, and that when it is cold outside, you appreciate the heat of apple cider and of the fire that you tell stories around all the more. I have realized that I was guilty of worrying about a future I couldn't control and focusing on the negative rather than the positive when I came here. That was foolish of me. In life, there will always be things to fret about, and I suppose that the trick to survival is in looking for the good in the midst of the bad and centering one's attention on that. _

_I also have observed that in life it is generally far easier to be the pessimist than the optimist, because typically it requires a tremendous amount of effort to perceive the good things when you are trapped in unpleasantness. For that reason, I greatly admire optimists like you, who have the strength and the courage to be optimistic, and I will make a sincere effort to emulate that behavior in the future. I may not always succeed, but I can only improve, and that will be a pleasure in itself. _

_I would write more, but I think I hear Lucian and Uri crying in the nursery, and I want to console them before their wet nurse arrives to do so. _

_Hoping that Mithros and the Goddess will bestow the happiness that you deserve,_

_Margarry _


	18. Chapter 18

Author's Note: Sorry to anyone who might have gotten confused about the timeline. We're delving into the opening part of _Lady Knight_ now if that helps anyone gain a clearer perspective of where we are in this fic in relation to the rest of the timeline. I beg your pardon also for the long time in between updates. Blame it on me having the stupidity to work on multiple fics at the same time, the hectic schedule of a college student, and fickle Muses. Much of this chapter is borrowed/stolen from _Lady Knight _just so you know in advance and won't think this coming chapter will be in any way original, since that would only cause you distress in the future as you are rapidly disillusioned.

Reviews: Reviews are nice birthday presents for lionesseyes13 just so everyone knows.

Apologies

Owen stood on the ramparts of Fort Giantkiller, staring out at the surrounding countryside. He wasn't officially on watch duty right now, but his friends were coming to the fort to receive their posts this evening, and he wanted to be among the first beings to spot them. Sure, he knew that the watch would call out when a group of riders approached. However, by then it would be too late to greet Kel, Neal, Merric, Seaver, and Esmond first, as he wanted to do.

He had been standing there for perhaps fifteen more minutes, bouncing around on his feet and rubbing his hands together to create enough friction to prevent his extremities from freezing in the cold that was the north's idea of approaching spring, when he saw a speck that appeared to be a team of horses come into view. A moment later, a trumpet blared from the fortress, demanding in music that the oncoming horsemen identify themselves or be fired upon. Within another minute, an answering trumpet announced that the incoming riders were indeed allies.

By that time, though, Owen was racing across the ramparts and down the stairs, so he could be the first one to welcome his friends to Fort Giantkiller. It was a good thing he had run. As it was, he barely managed to reach Kel as she dismounted from her tempestuous gelding, Peachblossom, who enjoyed snacking on any flesh within biting range.

"Kel, Kel!" he shouted joyfully, dashing up to her and flinging his arms around her. It was only after he had enfolded her in this rather clumsy embrace that it occurred to him that Margarry might not like the idea of him hugging other girls. That was silly, though. After all, Kel wasn't a real girl. In fact, she had gone to such a tremendous bother to prove that she wasn't that the least she deserved was the understanding that she wasn't at this point.

He heard Quinden mutter from behind Kel, "Mithros save us, I'd forgotten the Brat." For a second, he stiffened and scowled, because he had forgotten that the youngest member of Joren's obnoxious clique would be showing up here as well.

Then he relaxed and a grin returned to his features as he told himself that he could put up with nine Quindens if it meant that he could see Kel, Neal, Merric, Seaver, and Esmond. He considered retorting, but decided that it wasn't worth squandering the precious little time he had with his friends arguing with Quinden. Maybe life was really too short for fighting over everything that aroused his ire, after all.

"We knew you couldn't handle the border alone, so we came to lend a hand," Kel remarked lightly as he released her, denying him the opportunity to snap at Quinden even if he had wanted to do so. That was the Kel he knew: she could defuse practically any situation without making it obvious that she was doing so. Owen barely had time to realize this, though, because he was too busy greeting his other friends.

"Neal, you came!" he cried, beaming as he bent over to scratch Jump's lone ear, as Jump's tail pounded out a welcome on the dirt. All around Owen's head, Kel's sparrows cheeped out their own versions of hello. Raising his voice to be heard over the calling birds, he added even more loudly, "Merric, Seaver, Esmond, you're here!"

As he glanced upwards, he had the unpleasant revelation that he had neglected to greet someone who happened to be a duke. Cursing himself for his obliviousness, he shot to his feet, bowed, and said, "My lord duke, welcome to Fort Giantkiller. Forgive my inattention. If I may take your mount, your grace?"

"Mithros save us, the Stump broke him to bridle," proclaimed Neal dryly, as he dismounted and Owen held out a hand for Duke Baird's reins. "I thought it was impossible."

Owen wondered briefly if being Lord Wyldon's squire had changed him at all, because if it had, the change had operated on a level buried so deeply inside of him that he hadn't even noticed it himself. He still thought of himself as the same old Owen of Jesslaw, but maybe he wasn't. Perhaps only those who had been separated from him for awhile could spot the differences in him, because everyone else would have adapted to them day by day without even being aware of the fact that they were doing so.

His hopes that he was turning into someone his old self wouldn't have despised on sight were interrupted by Duke Baird warning his son, "Do not let me catch that nickname on your lips as long as you are under the man's command. You owe him the appearance of respect, not to mention proper obedience."

For a couple of tense seconds, Neal glowered at his father, and, as he accepted the reins Duke Baird handed him, Owen expected that Neal would offer some sarcastic rejoinder, but instead he merely bowed silently.

At this unprecedented occurrence, Owen couldn't contain a whistle of amazement. He had never seen Nealan of Queenscove withdraw from a verbal sparring match so quickly, and the thought that what had seemed like such a stable characteristic of his friend could change nearly caused Owen to drop Duke Baird's reins in astonishment. Now, he understood how Neal must have felt when Neal had made his quip about Owen being broken to bridle earlier. However, by the look of things, it didn't appear that Owen had been the only one broken to bridle during his squireship. Indeed, Owen was nursing a strong suspicion that years of traveling aside someone as temperamental as the Lioness had finally forced Neal to learn how to back down.

His musing over whether learning to back down was a positive thing or not was chopped off abruptly when he saw a slight teenage boy he had never met before heading toward the stables with Peachblossom and Hoshi in tow.

"Who was _that_?" he stuttered, gawking after the lad and wondering if his eyes were deceiving him. "Did you see that? He just—Peachblossom! He just took Peachblossom, and Peachblossom _went_!"

"That's Tobe," Kel explained, smiling at his shock. "He is good with horses."

Owen was about to request further clarification, but at that moment, Duke Baird cleared his throat and asked, "Did my lord Wyldon say what was to be done with us?"

"Your grace, forgive me," Owen apologized, bowing, as he recalled belatedly that a proper squire would have bustled the duke away the instant an opportunity to do so presented itself. Well, at least he wasn't completely broken to bridle. "My lord is out riding patrol yet, but I am to show you where you will sleep and ask if you will dine with him later. To the knights who accompany you—" He paused to bow to Kel and the others—"he sends greetings. Lukin will show you to your quarters and lead you to supper when you wish," he went on, as Lukin stepped forward. "My lord asks you to remain in the officers' mess hall after supper. He will send for you to talk of your assignments."

As Lukin led Kel, Neal, Merric, Seaver, Esmond, and Quinden to their quarters, Owen guided Duke Baird to the headquarters where he would be staying. After that, he hurried off to the mess hall and swallowed the army's idea of supper before bolting off to Wyldon's office to start ferrying the newly arrived knights from the officers' mess hall to Lord Wyldon's study to receive their orders.

During this task, he noted that Kel was the last one summoned, but he dismissed this fact as inconsequential and babbled on about how they were going to make the Scanrans rue the day they ever picked up swords as he guided her to Wyldon's office. It was only in the morning that he discovered how significant Kel's positioning had been.

After gulping down watery porridge and charred toast in the mess hall, Owen went to his knightmaster's office to receive the day's assignments. To his surprise, when he entered, Lord Wyldon gestured at the chair across from his desk, ordering, "Sit, Jesslaw."

A foreboding fist clenching in his stomach because he was positive that he did not wish to hear any news that Wyldon felt was bad enough to sit him down for, Owen sank into the chair.

"I owe you an apology, Owen," Wyldon stated stiffly as soon as his squire had settled himself.

"My lord?" Owen gaped at him, telling himself that he had somehow hopped from adolescence to old age, since he was obviously going deaf.

"You heard me." Lord Wyldon sounded slightly testy now.

"Did you just apologize to me, sir?"demanded Owen, stunned.

"I don't know anyone else in this room to whom I would be apologizing," answered Lord Wyldon, and Owen decided that only Neal could be more acerbic when asking for forgiveness.

"I can't accept an apology if I don't know what it's for, sir," he protested.

"True," conceded Wyldon. "Then I shall tell you, as you would have found out in a few moments anyway. I trust that you've heard about the new refugee camp that is being built along with Fort Mastiff."

"Yes, my lord. Even the walls here know about it," Owen replied, completely nonplussed, and having no idea which direction their conversation was traveling in.

"Well, I have assigned your friend Keladry to be in command there," Wyldon announced baldly.

"What?" Owen's eyes widened in outrage. "You made Kel a nursemaid when she's a better warrior than practically anyone and doesn't need to be kept hidden behind our lines?"

"No, I put her in a position of authority so that people would learn to accept her as a commander, since General Vanget, Goldenlake, and I aren't getting any younger, and it's about time we found people to replace us when we retire."

"Kel won't see it that way, sir." Owen shook his head.

"It's not my responsibility to worry about how Mindelan perceives my every action, Jesslaw," Lord Wyldon countered, his tone sharp.

"Maybe not, but it's mine to worry about how she sees me, my lord, since we've been friends for years," Owen flared. "Now, she's going to be furious at me for not warning her about what you were planning—"

"That's why I'm apologizing to you, Owen," interjected Lord Wyldon.

"It's not going to do me any good, though, is it, sir?" Owen snorted. "She won't believe that I didn't know."

"Yes, she will, because she knows what I do: you can't lie even when you want to and even by omission since your face gives you away," Lord Wyldon predicted.

His eyes narrowed, Owen hesitated. Then he responded, "If Kel forgives me, then I'll forgive you, my lord."

"Fair enough." Lord Wyldon nodded. "You'll find out soon enough whether Kel will forgive you, since I've assigned you to accompany her to the storehouse now to write down the supplies she chooses for her refugee camp."

Hearing this, Owen chewed on his lower lip. He wasn't ready to face Kel now, but he had no choice in the matter, just as Kel had no choice about being a nursemaid for refugees. All he could do was bow and exit Lord Wyldon's office.

As he headed toward the storehouse to meet Kel, he prayed to Mithros that she would believe him when he said that he hadn't known what Wyldon had planned, and that, if he had, he would have talked Wyldon out of it, or that most likely failing, would have warned her about her fate.


	19. Chapter 19

Author's Note: This chapter borrows a great deal from _Lady Knight _once again. Consider yourself forewarned.

Absolution

When Owen met Kel outside the storehouse, he discovered to his embarrassment that he couldn't even look into her eyes. He knew he had to if he was going to offer her a sincere apology, but he couldn't force himself to do it. Seeing the betrayal in Kel's eyes would be infinitely worse than fighting a thousand Scanrans single-handedly. At least if he battled the Scanrans, he would have an honorable death, whereas at this second the last thing he felt was virtuous.

To his horror, Kel's hand reached beneath his chin and tilted it upright. He could have pulled away and fought against her the way he had combated his own desire to meet her gaze earlier, but he couldn't do that. Even he had to take some responsibility for his actions.

"You didn't know." Kel's tone wasn't accusatory, but Owen's mind turned her words into a condemnation, and he flinched as though she had struck him.

"Kel, I swear I didn't!" Now that his mouth had opened, he found that words were tumbling out of it without his control. All he knew was that he had to make her understand that his crime had not been one of malice. He had betrayed her through stupidity, not through ill-will. Maybe that wouldn't matter to her because the net result would be the same, but to him it made a difference. To him, there was something less horrible about a clumsy error than about a deliberate, evil act of sabotage. "He told me this morning. He—he_ apologized_ for keeping something important from me, he said, especially when I have to learn about making camps like this, but he said that you would see it on my face, and he wanted to talk to you first. Kel, if I knew, I'd have argued him out of it." A fraction of his brain realized belatedly that persuading Lord Wyldon was about as challenging as convincing the sun not to set, and he amended sheepishly, "He's hard to argue with, but I would've tried. I'm so sorry!"

At this point, he had to stop babbling long enough to breathe. While he paused, he studied Kel's expression to check the impact that his wild appeals were having upon her and was astonished to see that she was grinning.

Before he could recover from his shock, she remarked, "Of course he wouldn't tell you. You're the worst liar I know, even if you're just not saying anything. You ought to feel virtuous, that he knows you can't lie."

Virtuous, Owen noted hysterically, was about the last thing he felt at the moment. A slab of beef was nobler than him, and just because Kel was willing to absolve him from any responsibility so easily, that didn't mean that he was ready to forgive himself.

"I feel like a failure," he admitted. Then, compelled to make her spot how guilty he truly was, he went on, "A true friend would have found out and warned you."

"How?" demanded Kel with the cool-headedness that had saved her, Owen, and a ragtag band of other pages when they had unexpectedly found themselves facing a horde of bandits. As they stepped into the storehouse, she continued, "Search his papers? That's hardly proper. And what would I have done if you'd told me? Run off? Stop fussing."

Staring at her as she opened the shutters, letting in streams of morning light so they could see the rows of goods, Owen marveled that she could be so serene in the face of what seemed to him to be a calculated snub regardless of what Wyldon claimed on the contrary. The words necessary to establish as much failed to arrive at his tongue as Kel's flock of sparrows soared through the window, and perched on his shoulders, or zipped around the room, as though they were commanders inspecting it.

"But, Kel, making you a, a nursemaid when you're a better warrior than anybody but my lord," he burst out when some of his thoughts managed to form themselves into words. While he absently stroked a sparrow, it occurred to him that humble Kel would definitely regard heroes like Alanna the Lioness and Lord Raoul of Goldenlake as better warriors than herself, and he added rapidly, trying to cover his blunder, "And Lord Raoul, and the Lioness. It's just not right!"

"My lord says I'll see plenty of fighting," replied Kel levelly.

Wondering if she was lying to make both of them feel better, Owen scrutinized her features for a long moment. Her hazel eyes were steady, her lips straight, and her chin set. There was no hint of emotional turmoil in her. She had accepted Lord Wyldon's decision. Maybe she understood Lord Wyldon's rationale and maybe she didn't. Either way, she had made peace with what life had thrown at her. Once again, Owen had cause to admire her resilience and poise. Nothing could faze her, and he wished that one day he would be able to go through his existence with a similar placid confidence.

If she was content with her fate, then as her friend, he was duty-bound to help her prepare to meet it. Locking eyes with her, he informed her somberly, "Anything you want me to do, Kel, you let me know. Anything I can do to help, tell me."

He gripped her arm for a second, as though she were one of his male friend's, and then released her, hoping in the back of his mind that Margarry wouldn't be upset if she ever heard about this.

"For now I need a quartermaster," responded Kel, patting him on the shoulder. "Someone who can say what's reasonable to draw for my people."

"Be right back," he promised, dashing out the door and running toward the quartermaster's office.

Five minutes later, he had returned with the quartermaster, and he, Kel, and the quartermaster spent all morning in the storehouse. With the quartermaster's aid, Kel was able to determine how much of various supplies she would require for her fort while Owen scribbled down a copy of exactly what items she would be taking and in what number for Lord Wyldon. In his opinion, it was tedious work, but at least it meant that he could see Kel.

Still, his fingers were numb from holding a quill for hours and smeared with ink, so he wasn't filled with regret when they finally finished calculating what Kel would need for her refugee camp, and he had to race off to deliver the list to Lord Wyldon as ordered.

"Ah, Mindelan wasn't greedy I see," Lord Wyldon observed after examining the list Owen gave him.

"She never is, my lord," Owen pointed out stiffly. "She's one of the most selfless people I've ever met."

"She is truly fortunate to have a tireless champion in you," Lord Wyldon commented dryly, tucking the list in one of his many meticulously organized piles.

"I'm lucky that she forgave me for not being a good enough friend to her, sir," Owen countered shortly, irritated that Wyldon would make such a remark when he knew how anxious Owen had been about just that very issue.

"I'm glad that she has accepted your apology." Lord Wyldon's tone softened slightly, and Owen's annoyance drained away. "I was also serious when I said that she was lucky to have you as a friend."

In response, Owen could only blink as he tried to figure out if Lord Wyldon had honestly given him a compliment or not.


	20. Chapter 20

Author's Note: We are moving along in Lady Knight, and this chapter changes setting quite a bit, so hopefully no one gets confused. If you do, let me know in a review. Also, sorry if this chapter is slow and short, but next chapter should be better.

Starkness

Two days after Kel's arrival at Giantkiller, she left again. This time, she rode out at the head of a train of soldiers who would serve under her alongside Duke Baird, Neal, who was supposed to take over as head healer of the refugee camp once his father departed, and Merric, who would be the camp's patrol captain. To Owen's delight, he didn't have to say farewell to Kel, Merric, or Neal yet, since he and Lord Wyldon ended up accompanying them to the refugee camp.

That meant he spent a morning riding Happy though the muddy April ground and singing traditional songs with everyone else on the way to the refugee camp. Of course, that also meant he could see the place where Kel would be in charge.

He was mildly disappointed when he arrived there and discovered that the place was nothing more than a miserable mudpit. Frankly, calling it a refugee camp was being rather generous. Staring around the place, Owen was flooded with sympathy for Saefas and the other refugees that would be reassigned here.

The great expanse of open ground inside the camp's walls was a mess of churned mud. Mixed into the mud were crates, plank walkways, and equipment placed between raw wooden platforms. These roughly hewn platforms must have been floors for future barracks that Owen was immensely grateful not to have to construct.

Apart from the pegs and starts of wooden floors that marked where future barracks would be erected, there was a barracks with the regular army standard flapping outside it, which must be where the soldiers assigned here lived. Not far from that, there was a well. By the well were two more barracks that were probably intended to house the refugees that looked even more dismal than the barracks that had served that purpose at Giantkiller.

In addition to the barracks, there was a half-finished infirmary, some storage sheds at the rear of the camp, an officer's residence, kitchens, and a mess hall. In short, then, it was as practical and as stark as anything the military would create. The problem was that its starkness was all the more obvious because of the mud and the unfinished nature of the buildings.

The idea of living here was enough to depress him, and he was glad that he wasn't going to be forced to stay here for long. This place could probably drive anyone insane. Even Giantkiller hadn't seemed so rough when he had arrived and been conscripted to help construct barracks.

In the end, Owen was relieved when he could finally stop looking around the place and enter the mess hall for lunch. There was nothing shocking about the mess hall. Like every other mess hall he had eaten in since he arrived in the north, the tables and benches were made of plain, sturdy wood, and the food was basically inedible.

After lunch, he, Lord Wyldon, Kel, Merric, and a squad of soldiers rode out with Captain Elbridge. Captain Elbridge had been in command of the camp before Kel came, and he now gave them a tour of the land surrounding the refugee camp.

When they returned from their ride, it was time for supper. As usual, the news about the palace and the border over supper was far more exciting than the unappetizing food, and Owen wasn't sorry when the meal ended. He had been anxious to see Kel give her first speech to her men, and he wasn't surprised at all when it was successful.

Still, he was surprised when one of the convicts approached her at the start of her speech. At first, Owen had imagined that the man was going to attempt to harm her, and his hand had flown to his sword. He needn't have worried, though, for the convict had turned out to be one of the bandits whom they had defeated as pages so many years ago, and, far from being angry at the defeat, the man had seemed pleased to be under the command of someone he knew was competent. Kel, Owen realized, was so amazing that even bandits bowed down to her without being asked.

Unfortunately, however, he couldn't see Kel work any more of her magic at the refugee camp, for the next day, he departed right after breakfast with Lord Wyldon and Captain Elbridge. They left taking with them extra soldiers and supplies for the new Fort Mastiff that Owen and Lord Wyldon would be relocating to shortly.

When he had waited on Elbridge at breakfast, Owen had discovered that Elbridge was so dour he made Lord Wyldon seem like a court jester. As such, Elbridge's presence alone ensured that the trip back from the refugee camp was not as pleasant as the journey there, and Owen was glad when they finally arrived inside Fort Giantkiller's walls again.

Following his return to Giantkiller, Owen found himself entangled in one organizational web after another as Lord Wyldon ensured that he had all the supplies and men necessary to move to Fort Mastiff and filled his successor in on everything. Finally, just when Owen was beginning to believe that they were only going to move weapons, food, and other supplies about in wagons and push parchment around but never actually go anywhere, they left for Fort Mastiff.

When they reached Fort Mastiff, Owen was relieved to see that it was nowhere near as stark and as muddy as the refugee camp Kel had been put in charge of, just as he was delighted to see Tristan, Cameron, Dustin, and Garret again. Although the sight of Quinton's buddies made him aware of the cavern in his heart that had formed when Quinton was slaughtered, it was a pleasant surprise to be reunited with some of the soldiers he had been close to at Fort Steadfast.

"I thought you were all stationed at Steadfast," he said once they had exchanged backslaps that first night they saw each other again in the mess hall.

"We was stationed there for awhile," answered Tristan, who was fighting a losing battle to chop up a stubborn and fatty slab of what the kitchen staff claimed was chicken. "Then we was reassigned here to help build Mastiff."

"Aye, Lord Raoul said he didn't need us, since he had enough men at Steadfast now that all of the Own was back," Garret added. "Lord Wyldon needed soldiers here, so we was transferred here by Vanget."

"It's a pretty simple and boring tale," Dustin finished through a mouthful of meat. "I'm sure ye have a better story of how ye came to be here."

"Not really." Owen shrugged. "I'm here because Wyldon was reassigned here."

"They've been doin' a lot of reassignin' lately," said Garret, sipping his milk. "Nobody can stay in one place for long. As soon as one company or commander gets familiar with a fort, that company or commander is shunted along to a different fort, and a new company or commander takes over."

"It all seems rather pointless," Tristan remarked, shaking his head.

"Not to mention the fact that it's givin' me saddle sores," grumbled Dustin.

"Nonsense," said Garret, rolling his eyes. "Ye'd have saddle sores from patrols anyway. Ye're always gettin' saddle sores and complainin' about them."

"I don't like ridin'," Dustin said, completely unabashed.

"Speakin' of patrols, when have ye been assigned to patrol, Owen?" asked Tristan.

"At the sixth bell in the morning," Owen replied, chomping away at his chicken and wondering how much it would hurt if his jaw broke while he tried to chew the uncooperative meat.

"Oh, then you be riding with Davis' squad," said Tristan. "They are a good bunch to ride with, although Walden Tanner does have a tendency to talk to himself when he gets that wide open stare on his face."

"It's his Gift that makes him do that," Dustin chimed in. "His Gift isn't strong or reliable enough for him to become a healer or somethin', but it's powerful enough to give him a touch of extra sensitivity to things."

"It's not wild magic like Daine has?" Owen's forehead furrowed.

"Nay." Garret shook his head. "Wild magic be with animals, but Tanner's magic doesn't have to do with animals at all. It ain't prophecy neither. It just connects him to things that be goin' on somewhere else at the present if they be large enough to make an impact on him."

"It's like he is a pond, and important events are like stones thrown into the water that cause waves," mused Tristan.

"You're being very poetic and all, but I have no idea what you are talking about," Owen said, shaking his head. "You aren't explaining what you mean very well."

"Maybe what we are talkin' about can't be described, then." Tristan sounded unfazed. "Don't worry. Once you meet Tanner, ye'll see what we mean."

The first two patrols that Owen rode with Walden Tanner and the rest of Davis' squad, he noticed nothing odd about Walden, except that Walden was slightly more reserved and serious than the average soldier. Still, there was nothing that screamed odd or magical about him until the enemy attacked Fort Mastiff on Owen's fourth day there.

He and the rest of Davis' squad had been joking and gossiping by the stabble, waiting for the patrol before them to return when suddenly Walden froze. His pale eyes became icy, and his back became rigid.

"What in the name of Mithros is up with ye now, Den?" The soldier next to Walden waved a hand in front of Walden's glassy eyes.

Walden didn't answer, but the next moment the trumpeter on Mastiff's ramparts rang out a warning. As the alarum roared through the fortress, Owen thanked Mithros that he was already in his armor as he ran to the position he had been assigned to guard in the event of an assault.


	21. Chapter 21

Author's Note: I felt badly about leaving Owen on the verge of battle, so I decided to regulate this fic to top of the list of fics I should update (there is kind of a method to my madness) even though I just updated it, which explains why I am updating relatively quickly this time. My Creative Writing professor also deserves credit because he randomly canceled class, and I had a few free hours that I wasn't counting on having all the sudden. Sure, I could have done schoolwork, but I am a lazy lioness who wanted to enjoy myself instead. I like this chapter better than last chapter, at any rate. Hopefully, you all will feel the same way. Without any further ado, here is the chapter:

Cursed

Owen's stomach twisted when his blade locked with that of a young man who appeared to be taller and more brawny than he was. Of course, the Scanran seemed to be a peasant, because, unlike Owen, he wasn't wearing any armor. That about evened the odds, Owen told himself as swords slashed all round him, horses whinnied, and arrows whizzed over his head from the ramparts.

Hoping with the back of his mind that the archers on the walls of Fort Mastiff had good aims because he didn't want to be shot in the back by his own allies like a cowardly traitor, Owen reminded himself that he didn't care about the odds. In fact, the harder something was to achieve, the more it was worth doing.

His opponent bounded forward, thrusting at Owen's left leg.

Reflexively, Owen lowered his sword and parried the blow, but did not make an assault himself, deciding to let his foe tire himself out. Then, when the peasant soldier had exhausted himself, he would lurch forward and end the duel.

When Owen blocked his move, the other soldier merely slid his sword up again and then swung at Owen from the side. Again, Owen parried, and, again, their swords collided. As their weapons clashed, he took advantage of the opportunity to step backward, his boot slurping as it landed on the muddy spring ground. A second after Owen retreated a few inches, his adversary launched the next barrage.

Gritting his teeth although Neal had told him on countless occasions that it was bad for them, Owen blocked every blow. At the end of the sequence, Owen noticed that his opponent's speed was flagging, and he grinned beneath his helmet. Ah, it was time to end the exercise, then.

Abruptly, Owen streaked forward, jabbing at his foe with his sword, and successfully slicing the other young man's right arm. Gasping in astonishment, the Scanran switched his weapon from his right hand to his left.

Good, Owen thought, seeing the reaction he wanted. Yes, all people who had received even basic military training had been taught to employ both hands during combat if they valued life outside the Black God's realm. However, most beings still relied on their right hand and arm more than their left during battle as in most activities. From what he had witnessed thus far, the Scanran was no exception to the rule, so a cut right arm would be a major liability for him.

His blood pounding in his ears, Owen leaped forward and thrust his sword at his enemy's right leg. The Scanran moved to block him, but was a shade too slow. A strip of fabric followed by a spurt of blood smacked into the mud. The next instant, Owen had plunged his sword into the cursing Scanran's heart.

He waded on into the fray engulfing the area surrounding Fort Mastiff before he could think about what he had done. If he started thinking about what he had done, he might hesitate next time. If he hesitated, he might find himself in a mass grave by this time tomorrow. That would not be jolly, that was for certain, and it would make Margarry cry.

There was time for no further thought about Margarry, though. He was twisting to launch an attack at a Scanran's flank now. The Scanran's eyes blazed with shock as he pivoted to face Owen and somehow managed to parry his first strike. After that, their duel fell into a battle rhythm.

All of Owen's focus was centered on his skirmish with the Scanran in general, and his opponent's weapon in particular. He devoted himself to slashing in to intercept it repeatedly and to seizing any chances to penetrate his adversary's guard. His brain disengaged, and his muscles and instincts took over. His hammering heart provided the cadence as surely as any drillmaster's commands.

Assault and block. Blow and counterblow. Attack and parry. Advance and retreat. Leap and spin. Slash and evade. Bind and counterbind. Broken time and recovery. Then start again. No pause for thought. No time for any indecision.

Owen had no notion of how long this drama reenacted itself before he slide around his opponent's guard long enough to slit the Scanran's throat.

Quickly, before he could see the blood add more liquid to the muddy earth, Owen moved on in the battle. Then, everything else faded into the background as he dedicated himself fully to a duel with another Scanran.

When he was in battle mode as he was now, all that mattered was the fight. His world was narrowed to his body and his sword, which had become a mere extension of his body, and the weapon of his foe. All he cared about was blocking blows from his opponent and making strikes of his own.

In battle mode, he lost all awareness of time, because time was no longer significant to him. That was why, in his head, the duel with the Scanran could have lasted either a century or just a moment. In battle mode, he wouldn't even have noticed the Scanran trumpet call out for a retreat if the soldier he had been fighting hadn't suddenly fled.

Owen was about to chase after him, accusing the Scanran of being the worst sort of coward, when a gauntlet grasped his shoulder. Spinning around rapidly, Owen saw that Lord Wyldon had somehow come up next to him in the course of the battle.

"Don't bother giving chase, Owen," Lord Wyldon said, flipping back his helmet.

"But they're fleeing in a rabble," protested Owen, blinking. Maybe Wyldon was going blind or senile if he had missed this. "We can get rid off more of them."

"I know we routed them, but that doesn't matter," Lord Wyldon answered in a clipped voice. "We may have won the little battle, but I fear we have lost the big one. You can hunt rabbits another day, but for now it's time to return to the fort and get some real work done."

As Owen, Lord Wyldon, and the battered but victorious Tortallans returned to Fort Mastiff, Wyldon explained, "Walden Tanner just approached me. His Gift sometimes allows him to have glimpses into what is happening during the present somewhere else, and he says he saw the defenders of Giantkiller being slaughtered by the Scanrans and some of their metal monsters."

"So we have to go relieve the men at Giantkiller," Owen concluded as they rode through Mastiff's gates.

"No." Wyldon shook his head, his eyes on the Tortallan soldiers who were helping their wounded companions into the healers' ward. Owen's gaze fell on the injured as well, and he noted with a sinking feeling that victory sometimes felt like defeat, because there were always people who were hurt and killed in every battle. Only the numbers changed whether it was written as a success or a failure. "I suspect it is too late for that. We go to see what we can collect from the remains of the fort. We go to see if we can track down some of the Scanrans who attacked the fort and if we can rescue any hostages they might have taken."

"Oh." That was all Owen could say. Put like that, their next action didn't sound so glorious. Then again, so far his experiences up north had essentially shown him that war wasn't glorious. It was ugly and harsh; the only good thing about it was that it was honest. It revealed who was brave and noble, and who wasn't.

"Take Windtreader—" Wyldon began.

"Happy, my lord," Owen cut in.

"Excuse me?" Lord Wyldon raised an eyebrow, looking as if he suspected that the battle had finally driven his squire berserk.

"His name is Happy, sir," Owen said.

"Happy, then," Wyldon conceded impatiently. "Take Happy to the stable. Get him some food and water. You are riding out with Davis' squad, the rest of Company Eight, and me to investigate what happened at Giantkiller. The other Companies will remain here to guard Mastiff in case of an attack. I don't think that the Scanrans will try another, especially as the one here was probably just a distraction, but it never hurts to be certain. Be at the gates in an hour to rendezvous with Eighth Company and myself."

With that, he rode off, probably to issue more commands to ensure that Eighth Company would be prepared to depart when he wanted to leave and that everything would flow smoothly while he was gone. Watching his knightmaster ride away, Owen had to admire the man. There was never any doubt in how he carried himself, and Owen wished he could move through his own life with that same assurance.

Yet, he couldn't. Time and again, he found himself saying or doing the wrong thing. That knowledge that he could do the wrong thing sometimes made him uncertain about how he should act next. It was times like this that he thought he was a coward and that all the pages and squires who babbled on about how brave he was were lunatics. It was times like this when he suspected that all he ever did in life was put on a mask of courage. Of course, maybe Wyldon's confidence was a mask as well. Perhaps everyone went through life with a mask on. Maybe putting on a good mask that nobody could see through was all anybody could expect a person to do and what life was all about.

He didn't know, and he wasn't going to worry about it now. It was another one of those questions that would have to haunt him late at night when he should be sleeping. It couldn't trouble him now. Now, he had to care for his mount.

As this occurred to him, he led Happy to the stables, where he brushed his horse, fed it an apple, and offered it a bucket of water.

"You like the name Happy, don't you?" he asked his steed, as he stroked the animal's nose once he had finished tending to it.

In response, the horse whinnied and flicked its tail. Whenever he addressed Happy, Owen liked to imagine that was an affirmative.

"I named you Happy because I like happy things," Owen said simply. "There aren't many happy things in war, though, are there?"

Again, the horse whinnied and swished its tail around as if it were shooing off invisible flies.

"That's okay, though," he whispered. "That makes you all the more special, right?"

This remark was greeted with another whinny and swish. This time, the tail brushed against the wall, and Owen chuckled, "That tail of yours could be a real weapon. I reckon it will kill someone soon, even though that will probably be by mistake."

The instant the words emerged from his lips, he regretted them. Killing reminded him of the lives he had taken today, and it also forced him to envision what he would see when he arrived at Fort Giantkiller. Garish images of streams of blood on buildings, crimson mud, mangled bodies, scavenging birds, hungry flies, and ravenous Stormwings flooded his mind, and it took a major act of willpower to shove them out of his head.

Needing a distraction, he fumbled around in his pocket and pulled out a bag of nuts covered with a sticky, sweet sauce. How they had managed to stay in his pocket during the battle was a mystery, but he was glad they had. They had arrived yesterday afternoon in a package from Margarry, and he had been planning to share them with Davis' squad while they were patrolling.

"I guess that if I fed my mount, I should feed myself before I faint," Owen decided aloud, shoving a handful of nuts into his mouth as he spoke. It was perfectly acceptable to talk with your mouth full of food if no one was around to hear.

Happy's neck stretched forward and the horse tried to gobble up the nuts in the bag. Quickly, Owen jumped back, scolding, "These aren't for you! They're for people."

Happy snorted.

"I still don't believe you're human," Owen said, grinning. It was times like this when he knew that he really did love Happy. Then, he sobered. "We'd better go now, Happy. We don't want to be late to meet Wyldon and the others. A knight who is tardy costs lives, and I think enough people have died already, don't you?"

Happy whinnied and flicked his tail as they left the stables, and Owen decided that he would have to teach his horse to recognize rhetorical questions.

When Owen, Lord Wyldon, and the Eighth Company rode into Fort Giantkiller, Owen eyes lit on a scene so gruesome that his imagination hadn't even been able to devise anything half as horrible to torment him with on the journey there. The dead, so mangled that they were barely recognizable as the people they had once been, were strewn everywhere.

Every corpse was cut up by weapons, and bent in some impossible pose or other. The bodies in the shade were swarming with flies, while those in the sun were swelling. All the corpses had flesh picked from their bones by animals and Stormwings. Owen tried not to contemplate how the bodies on the ground had been massacred or how they had been desecrated once they had been killed.

Bile rose in his mouth, and he struggled to swallow it. He wasn't going to heap another indignity on the dead by vomiting all over them. Hoping to gain control over his obstinately churning stomach, he looked around at the ruins of what had once been a solid, dependable fortress. None of the buildings were intact, for every structure had walls that had been burned or scarred with sword hits.

From a league off, he heard Lord Wyldon assigning the squads of Eighth Company to search the barracks, mess hall, and offices of the bastion for reusable objects, any potential survivors of the debacle, and clues as to which direction the enemy had left in. Numbly, he entered a barracks along with Wyldon and Davis' squad.

As they combed methodically through the building, Owen's heart grew even heavier as he realized that the barracks must have housed refugees waiting to be transferred to Kel's camp. The objects left behind suggested that, at any rate, he thought, as they kicked through the debris of ordinary lives.

He saw a bruised black pot and pictured a mother stirring porridge in it for her family. He saw a boot and envisioned a man trudging through the mud with it on. He saw a scorched roll of bedding and imagined a little girl drifting off to sleep on it. He saw a wooden toy soldier with faded paint, pictured a young boy playing with it, and wished suddenly that he himself had never been to war, so he could still believe it was glorious. All of the people these objects had belonged to were being held captive by the Scanrans now.

I won't think of things like that, he informed himself sternly. Yet, he couldn't bring himself to stop imagining these things, as painful as they were to consider, especially when his eyes landed on a crib. A scorched piece of linen trailed out of it, and the bile burned up his throat again.

"There is nothing to be found here." Wyldon's voice barely penetrated the ice that filled Owen's skull. "Come along."

Davis' squad left the building, but Owen remained rooted in place, as frozen as his mind.

"Owen." That was Wyldon speaking again, but his usually brusque voice was soft. "Come."

At the sound of his name, something inside Owen thawed again, and he found that he could exit the barracks.

He, Lord Wyldon, and Davis' squad met up with the rest of Eighth Company outside the gates, where Wyldon split up the squads again to examine the terrain surrounding Fort Giantkiller for signs of where the Scanrans had fled with the refugees.

As he searched for tracks in the mud that would hint at the direction the Scanrans had taken, Owen found himself alongside Walden and he asked thickly, "Did you foresee this?"

"Nay," Walden replied tersely, shaking his head. "My problem is that I can't foresee these things. If I could, then I could do somethin' to prevent them or warn people about them. I only see flashes of things like this when they are goin' on."

"I don't suppose that you saw which direction the Scanrans fled in," Owen said, a trace of hope entering his manner.

It was a hope that Walden instantly squashed, however. "Nay, I didn't. My Gift is useless, Squire Owen. It only shows me things that I can't change that I don't wish to see. All I saw was Scanrans slaughtering our men. I wouldn't have even known that the massacre was occurring at Giantkiller if I hadn't seen the Company insignia on the men whom I witnessed being killed and hadn't known that Company was posted here."

"It was awful enough seeing the soldiers' remains in a group like this." Owen shuddered. "It must have been even worse to see them die alone, and then to have to travel here to see exactly what happened to those who were slaughtered."

"Ye know what, Owen?" Walden cocked his head at Owen as they moved on with their investigation.

"What?" Owen asked, frowning over a track. His scowl deepened when he saw that the track looked very old—too old to follow.

"Ye're the first person ever to say somethin' like that to me," Walden said, and Owen stared at him. Pity rippled through Owen as Walden went on, "Most soldiers are scared of my powers, because they reckon that my peculiar Gift—or Curse as I call it in me mind—is unlucky. In my home village, everyone, including me Father, thought I was a freak. My mother was the only one who didn't think that I was nature's idea of a practical joke-- she was just disappointed that I didn't inherit her healing Gift."

"You aren't a freak," Owen stated at his most vehement, "and you aren't a disappointment. As a matter of fact, you're loads braver than I am. You were all alone when you saw those soldiers killed, and I froze up just looking at the debris the refugees left behind."

"Ye have courage," Walden reassured him. "Ye moved on. That's all courage be, if ye ask me: movin' on even when ye are spooked."

"I still don't think I am as brave as you, but if you ever want to talk to me about something your Gift shows you, I'm all ears. You shouldn't have to deal with those visions all alone unless you want to." As he established as much, Owen pulled out the bag of nuts Margarry had sent him, immensely grateful that Happy hadn't managed to gobble them up, and held it out to Walden. "Here. Have some. A little sugar might get rid off some of that perpetual paleness of yours."

"Ye know I don't get care packages from me family or from the sweetheart that I don't have, so I can't repay you in kind with food or somethin'," Walden warned him, not taking any nuts.

"That makes the gift all the better, then." Owen still held out the nuts.

"Maybe nobility does get passed down through the generations of nobles, after all, then." Walden smiled slightly and popped a few nuts in his mouth. Then, his smile was extinguished as he gazed over his shoulder at Fort Giantkiller and murmured, "Maybe nothing is ever lost."

Trying to picture all the spirits of all the dead soldiers he had ever known at peace in an afterlife as they couldn't have been in life, Owen muttered, "I like that idea. I like it a lot."


	22. Chapter 22

Author's Note: Sorry I haven't updated in ages, folks, but I am very busy during this time of year, and when I am not busy, I spend hours devouring all the lovely books I received for Christmas. Anyway, speaking of Christmas, I hope all those who celebrate that holiday had a merry one (if you didn't, I'll set an appointment so that you can speak to Santa about that), and that everyone will have a good new year.

Trapped

It was nighttime now, and Owen, Lord Wyldon, and the company that had rode out to investigate the remains of Fort Giantkiller were camped out. Since they couldn't have made it back to Fort Mastiff before nightfall, and Wyldon had decided that it was unwise to travel after dark, even as a company.

Owen didn't blame him. They might have been on their own ground, but somehow it felt like they were on hostile soil. That's why he was sticking to Davis' squad like mud to the sole of a shoe. That's why all of them glanced regularly about the perimeter of the camp, even though they knew that soldiers were standing watch. Maybe Owen would never feel safe again, even back at the Royal Palace or at home in Jesslaw. Perhaps war made everybody insecure and , he pretended along with Davis' squad that everything was normal as he engaged in beetle racing.

Owen had never been much of a gambler, or at least he had never been much of one where money was involved. As he envisioned several of his coins disappearing while Walden's racing beetle surged toward victory, unchallenged and unstoppable, he knew why.

The bug wasn't exactly greased lightning, but it didn't need to be. It just needed to have a sense of direction, which was a skill that seemed to be in short supply among the insect life he and Davis' squad had found scuttling around the campground. Its talent for knowing where it was headed was obvious as Owen's and the rest of the squad's beetles lurched about chaotically while Walden's trotted on a straight, determined course toward the finish line—a string stretched across the upturned rations crate that formed the makeshift racetrack.

Owen watched as the clueless beetles rushed back and forth, buffeting the walls of the crate and bouncing off them repeatedly. For some reason, he found himself ascribing human thoughts to them and wondered if they imagined that they might eventually be able to batter themselves an escape route through the side of the crate. If they did, he had to give them five points for sheer persistence, even if it was ultimately futile.

"Why did I ever convince you to play with us, Walden?" Owen asked, trying to take his mind off the hapless insects, since they reminded him too much of himself and his fellow soldiers. He didn't want to think of them all fighting and dying in just another battle in an ancient war between Tortall and Scanra. The best way to do that was just to go on living as though nothing had changed. Although he had seen too many bodies ravaged by Stormwings and the belongings the refugees had left behind at the fortress where they had believed they would be protected from harm that day, he had to act as though he hadn't. He had to behave normally, because sometimes courage involved showing his true emotions, but most of the time it meant he had to put on a mask of jolliness. He was a morale booster, and he couldn't lose his good cheer. If he did, he would just be lowering the moods of people who had witnessed the same horrors that he had. There was only a loss, and not a gain, in that. Crying would help none of them now, only acting. "You're robbing me of all my money faster than a pickpocket, for Mithros' sake."

"Ye persuaded Den to join us 'cause the two of ye are conspirin' against us," grumbled Lucian Preston, one of Davis' squad, but there was a light, teasing quality to his voice. Of Davis' squad, he seemed to be the one who was closest to Walden, and none of Davis' squad disliked Walden. They just treated him with the polite, cautious, and somewhat embarrassed distance that Owen's extended family used with his grandmother Selene when she emerged from the chambers she usually locked herself up in on feast days to celebrate with her relatives. Yes, if Davis' squad was a family of sorts, then Walden was the eccentric old lady who talked to dead people and knitted ugly scarves for beings who had long since been buried. After seeing the pain isolation had inflicted on Walden, Owen couldn't help contemplating if he would be able to continue to make a habit of avoiding Grandmother Selene as much as he could. After all, she couldn't control her oddities any more than Walden could, and she meant to do well, not ill. She just was confused about who exactly was among the living, but perhaps she had a right to be after she had seen her friends, her husband, and her daughter—Owen's mother—die before her. Nobody could remain sane after losing so many loved ones. Owen should be more charitable, he supposed, especially given that he couldn't guarantee that he wouldn't be the one addressing random people as Quinton decades from now. "Like any noble would, yer going to take a portion of his winnings as a tax."

Any reply that Owen might have offered in response was swallowed when he gazed over at Walden and saw that the man looked less pale and beleaguered than usual. There was even a ghost of a smile on his face as he urged his beetle on, "Go on. Show 'em what yer made of…that's me boy…"

Grinning at the impact that interacting with Owen and the rest of Davis' squad was having on Walden, Owen extended a careful finger to nudge his beetle back on course. Its iridescent green wing cases reminded him of daywings that Kel had once told him inhabited the Yamani islands. According to Kel, those bugs lived for one frantic, brightly colored day in the blazing Yamani summer and then died. As a page, Owen had thought that going out in a blaze of glory when you were at your best was a noble exit for any warrior, but after experiencing war firsthand he had worked out that it wasn't so glamorous. A brief life wasn't glorious at all; it was unfair.

Life was short, especially for a soldier, and Owen found that knowledge increasingly depressing. Daywings just illustrated on a smaller scale what was going to happen to him and everyone he loved all too soon, and the worst thing was that he could not cheat fate. All he could do was go on living and smiling as always. He was helpless, and yet he couldn't give into despair. That would just ruin whatever time he had left with those he cared about, which was something he refused to do.

Still, Owen couldn't prevent himself from feeling that he was just like the beetle he had racing around the upended rations crate. Like his poor beetle, he was trapped, shunted from location to location without really knowing if there was a greater plan and what it might be if there was, and banging his head against the wall of a war that had gone on for centuries and was probably neither winnable or losable.

Tired of thinking of things he had in common with insects since he was a human being, Owen returned his attention to the competition between the beetles. When he did so, he spotted that his beetle had stumbled off course again.

"Get a move on, idiot," he snorted, prodding the bug back on course again. "It's that way."

"No cheatin'," protested Lucian. "Ye can't keep pushing yer beetle back on course. That ain't fair to the rest of us."

"Don't worry. I know I've lost already," Owen said, waving a placating hand at Lucian. Then, he tossed a copper coin at Walden to pay the bet. Once he had done so, he picked up his beetle and turned it toward the finish line. "I just hate to see the poor thing bumbling around like that. I can't stand not helping it when it is so confused and pathetic."

"So, ye be a softie when it comes to all lost creatures," said Walden. "Here I was thinkin' I was special."

"You are special, and in a good way, Den," Owen insisted, employing the nickname that Davis' squad had devised for Walden.

Walden opened his mouth to answer but was cut off when Owen's beetle suddenly dashed off in the direction of Lucian's chosen bug—a brilliant turquoise one—and began making amorous advances toward it.

"Somehow, I don't reckon that its mind is on the race." Lucian chuckled, as Walden's beetle pottered on, acting as quietly steady as its temporary owner, and crossed the finish line. Noticing this, he added, "Aye, Walden's done it again. Drinks will be on him now next time we find a tavern to lounge about in for awhile, since he is the one with the money now."

"We'll make you a little trophy to commemorate your three straight wins, too," Owen commented, as the rest of Davis' squad reluctantly dropped coins into Walden's outstretched palm. "You can put the winner out to stud now, and start breeding thoroughbreds from it."

"Hmm." Walden frowned thoughtfully as he examined his scarlet beetle. "Will I get striped ones or mauve ones if I mate it with Lucian's?"

"It's not like mixing paint or something." Owen shook his head. He might not have been best source of information about breeding, but he had learned quite a few important things about it from Wyldon's explanations about mating various dogs and horses.

"Oh, that's interstin'. I will be keepin' that in mind, then," answered Walden. With that, he scooped up the beetles and threw them into the air. They scattered in a dazzling display of gemlike wings, and then vanished into the nighttime sky. That meant that they could fly just fine, Owen observed, gawking at the air where they had disappeared, so why had they never soared away from the racetrack? They hadn't been helpless after all. What had made them choose to keep smashing their foolish little heads against the sides of the crate?

Sensing that he didn't want to consider that issue, he asked another uncomfortable question aloud, "Den, do you know what's happening to the villagers the Scanrans captured?"

"No," Walden responded, his lips thinning into a grim line. "I haven't had any visions about that, thank Mithros."

"Those poor people." Lucian exhaled sorrowfully. "The soldiers who died there are better off than they are. It's better to die quickly in a fight than to face the torture that the Scanrans must be plannin' for them."

"If I knew that I was goin' to be taken hostage by the Scanrans, I'd take a knife to me throat before they could capture me," Seth Ryland, another member of Davis' squad, declared, his expression resolute. "There are plenty of things worse than death, and the Scanrans probably do most of them to their captives before they kill 'em. When death finally comes to their hostages, it has to be a mercy."

"Suicides don't get peace in the afterlife," Owen reminded him, his eyes widening.

"I wouldn't be too fussed about that, to be blunt with ye." Seth shrugged. "To stay alive in such a situation, ye'd be gambling that there be an afterlife, and I ain't convinced there is one. After all, in order for there to be an afterlife, there would have to be gods."

"Ye don't believe in gods?" Owen felt his eyes expanding again.

"Ye tell me." Seth pointed back at the area where Fort Giantkiler had once stood so proudly. "If there are gods, why do such things happen? If they are just and merciful, why would they let good people suffer like that? If they don't have the power stop that, can they really be gods, and if they have the power to stop it and they don't, why should we bother worshippin' them?"

"So that the odds are less that they destroy us," Davis snapped. "Shut up, Seth, or ye'll bring the wrath of Mithros and the Black God down upon us all. Ye might not believe in them, but the rest of us do and don't want their hammer to hit the tops of our heads."

"Ye think they haven't already hit us?" retorted Seth, gesturing accusingly in the direction of Fort Giantkiller.

"We're still alive, aren't we, genius?" Davis pointed out.

"Ye imagine that the people at Giantkiller did something to deserve what the Scanrans did to them, then." There was a definite menace in Seth's tone now.

"I didn't say that," Davis said, backtracking.

"Ye implied it," snarled Seth. "Well, that ain't true. My nephew, Reuben—the apple of his mother's eye who only got into this war because he wanted to be a soldier like me—was stationed there. He was a good lad. He didn't deserve to die like that or have his corpse ripped up by Stormwings. Why did the Black God kill him instead of me? Is the Black God using some insane equation that mortals don't understand that forces him to kill people who are younger and better than me, or is he just striking randomly?"

"Maybe Mithros and the Black God were punishing someone else," Davis said softly. "There were more people stationed at Giantkiller than just yer nephew, after all."

"If that's the case, then the gods are very cruel to allow Reuben to suffer for the crimes of somebody else." Seth buried his head in his palms. "Now, I have to be the one to tell me dear sister that her only son is dead 'cause it was all my grand stories of war that inspired him to join up. I have to explain to her that because I neglected to mention how horrible war can be, he chose to join up, and now he has experienced stuff that's even worse than I have. Now, I have to be the one to tell her that Reuben would be alive and marryin' his sweetheart soon if it weren't for me. Now, I have to live with the guilt of killing him as surely as the filthy Scanrans did."

"Ye didn't kill him." Lucian shook Seth's shoulder fiercely. When Seth gazed into Lucian's face with tears pooling in his eyes, Lucian muttered, "Please tell me that ye aren't crackin' up and considering endin' your own life, my friend."

"I ain't," Seth choked out. "I have to go on living. It is my punishment. Besides, in order to kill yerself, I reckon there has to be nothin' left for ye to keep breathin' for, and I ain't that desperate yet. After all, I have me family and me squad to live for, don't I?"

"Aye." Davis nodded fervently. "That ye do."

"It's good to know that we ain't going to wake up to find that ye plunged a knife into yer own chest," said Lucian, trying to force levity on a moribund exchange. "After all, if ye did yerself in then we'd get a replacement, and we might end up with someone who is even more of a loony than Den."

"Yes, only that loony might actually be more of a danger to his squad than Den is," Seth snickered, as Walden flushed. Then, Seth went on defensively, "Of course, if I was considerin' suicide, there wouldn't be anything wrong with it. My life is me own. I have a right to take control of my destiny and end it if I want to. If there be an afterlife, which I ain't convinced of, then when the Black God weighs my soul, he would be ruthless indeed if I was desperate enough to kill myself to deny me the chance at happiness in the afterlife that I never had in life."

"Maybe you had that chance at happiness in life, and you were just too blind to see it or too fearful to take a stab at having it," Owen shouted, surprising even himself at his intervention. For some reason, Seth's defense of suicide irked him. It wasn't just the memory of all the soldiers who had died defending the lives of others and struggling to survive that angered him, it was also the memory of his mother that rose, unbidden, inside him. His mother had been brutally slaughtered by bandits, and he suspected that she could have suffered a lot less if she had found a way to commit suicide. Yet, she hadn't, because she must have wanted to live so that she could see her husband and children again. That idea seared him, and he turned as much of the heat and agony back on Seth, who had brushed against the scabs that time was laboring to build over the wounds the dead left him with. "Suicide is a selfish coward's way out, and nothing ever gets better if you kill yourself. You disgust me, Seth!"

With that, he shoved himself to his feet, and, before anyone could say anything else, stalked off. He stormed through the camp, feeling his temper waning along the way, back to the tent he was sharing with Lord Wyldon. When he reached it, he thrust open the canvas flaps and strode in to see Wyldon leaning over a map.

"You're trembling," Wyldon observed, glancing up from the map to study his squire. "Do you have a fever, or are you just cold?"

"Neither, my lord," Owen said, shaking his head. Another dreadful question snuck up on him, and before he could close his lips against it, he burst out, "Sir, am I cracking up?"

His forehead knotting, Lord Wyldon pressed his palm against the younger man's forehead for a moment. As he withdrew his hand, he said, "You don't seem to have a fever. Humph."

"I know that." Impatience was mounting in Owen, and it was revealed in his voice. "What I want to know is if I am breaking up, sir."

"A question for a question, Squire." Lord Wyldon arched an eyebrow. "Why do you think you are cracking up?"

"I was really upset and frozen at Giantkiller earlier, and now I am shaking with anger." Owen shrugged his shoulders as he offered the best explanation for his fears that he could. "That sounds pretty crazy to me."

"To me, that sounds like a normal reaction to what you saw today, and I am rather more experienced in such affairs than you are," Wyldon said, rolling up the map with a neat snap. "War is insane, Owen, and it makes everyone involved in it a little crazy. The trick is to not let it turn you into a monster. As long as you don't become a monster, you haven't cracked up. You've only been broken if you allow war to turn you into a monster."

"Am I becoming a monster?" Owen worried about this often when he was alone in his bed at night, so he decided to discuss the matter aloud for the first time, since this seemed like too perfect an opportunity to ignore. "Before he died, Quinton told me that I reminded him of Bevin, and Bevin became a monster, didn't he? If I am like Bevin, I must have some monstrous qualities in me, sir."

"With all he told you about Bevin, Quinton is lucky he's dead, or I would have killed him by now," Wyldon scowled. Seeing the distress etched on Owen's features, his expression softened as he sighed. "Yes, Owen you share many qualities with Bevin—impulsiveness, wild courage, determination, and even a similar sense of humor—and that's one of the reasons why I hesitated before taking you as my squire. However, you are very different from Bevin."

"I am?" Owen couldn't keep the dubiousness out of his voice.

"Yes, you are," Lord Wyldon told him briskly. "You are a much less selfish person than Bevin. When you are in pain, your instinct is to reach out to others, as you did with Tanner today—"

"You know about that, my lord?" Owen stuttered, his cheeks burning.

"There is little you do that I don't know about, Squire, but you needn't look embarrassed, for what you did with Tanner is nothing to be ashamed of." If anything, Lord Wyldon's tone was even brusquer now. "Anyway, it is that very interest and dedication to others that will prevent you from cracking up entirely. When selfish people like Bevin have something awful happen to them, they break and become monsters, because they have nobody else to care about or live for. Duty to others keeps us selfless enough to survive war. Those who are selfish like Bevin receive the worst punishment of all: being totally alone in the world, since all they ever cared about was themselves, and now all they will ever have is themselves."

"Quinton said he and many other soldiers liked Bevin, sir," Owen remarked, confused.

"Of course they did. Bevin had a knack for making friends, but all of his friendships were about what he could get out of them, not what he could give. Bevin wouldn't have defended his friends like you do unless there was something in it for him." Lord Wyldon's gaze became distant, and Owen imagined that he was reflecting on how Bevin abused Anwen. "It's a pity I didn't notice that earlier. If I did, I might never have taken him as my squire, and all of our lives would be so different. Of course, before his injury his selfishness was less obvious…"

Wyldon trailed off, lost in thought, and for several long moments silence filled the tent. Then, Owen hedged, "You've accused me on countless occasions of being too soft. What if I break because I'm too soft?"

"I doubt that will happen," Wyldon answered crisply. "After seeing three of my students fail, I realize that I am far from a perfect instructor, but, whatever my failings as a teacher entail, I do not turn out weaklings. Quite the opposite, in fact. I have come to believe that my gravest flaw is that I create people who are so hard that they become brittle and break when they crash into things in the world that are even harder than them. As such, even though you are sometimes more emotional than I would like, I don't think it likely that you will emerge from almost eight years under my instruction as too soft."

Owen didn't know how to respond to any of that, so he just fixed his eyes on his feet. The tent was quiet again for a moment or two that seemed to drag out into hours, and then Wyldon picked up an envelope and held it out to Owen with a "Margarry sent this to you with the bag of nuts. I hadn't gotten around to reading it before."

"Nor have you now, sir." Owen stared at the unbroken seal of the letter that was now in his hands.

"I have recently been reminded that you are not Bevin, and Margarry is not Anwen." Wyldon absently rubbed his shoulder where a winged horse had savaged it, but his brown eyes were locked on his squire. "I have decided to let the priestesses alone monitor your correspondence. By doing so, I have trusted you with my youngest daughter. If you break faith with me, I will make sure that you regret it for years."

"I won't violate your trust or Margarry's," Owen promised instantly.

Wyldon scrutinized him for what felt like a century while Owen held his breath, and then Wyldon nodded his satisfaction. "You should get to sleep. Tomorrow we get up before dawn to return to Mastiff."

"Yes, sir," Owen agreed automatically, but, after he had changed and slipped under his covers, he read Margarry's note before he blew out the candle.

Reading Margarry's letter was enough to bring a grin to his face, because it was filled with descriptions of the beautiful songs that her new roommate had sung to celebrate the coming of springs and how one of her friends, Thalia, had just gotten engaged. According to Margarry, Thalia was delighted with the man she was going to marry and had asked Margarry to serve as a bridesmaid. Although he sensed that he would soon be reading long letters about banquet foods and fabric colors that he didn't normally associate with Margarry, Owen was happy, since he knew that Margarry was glad. Somehow, knowing that someone he loved was happy was a tremendous comfort to him.

As he blew out his candle, Owen thought that the world was a cold, dark place. Some people became so hard in a frantic attempt to protect themselves from it that they ended up shattering upon real contact with it like Bevin had, whereas others, like Anwen, were so delicate that they couldn't face reality and could only retreat from it. There was a middle ground, though, and he and Margarry had found it together. They would survive for each other, and Owen would keep fighting to make the world a safer place for her. He wasn't trapped here. He had chosen to be here to serve others, and that was what made all the difference.


	23. Chapter 23

Besieged

"To drink or not to drink, that is the question," Lord Wyldon mumbled, staring at the bottle of wine standing at the edge of his desk. Owen had just carried two letters from Vanget up to him, and he was looking more exhausted and harried than Owen had ever seen him. His normally rigid posture had crumbled in on itself like a log that had been in a fire too long. That alone was enough to terrify Owen. Even if he didn't know what the letters said, the news must be awful if it had the power of making his knightmaster distraught. "The answer is beginning to look more and more like the former."

"My lord, ever since my mother died, my father has been known to frequently raid the wine cellar," said Owen, deciding to test the depth of the water by jumping in as usual. "It would make him all jolly for awhile, but then, once the effects of it wore off, he would be left as depressed as ever."

At his words, Lord Wyldon started slightly, as though he had completely forgotten his squire's presence. Then, he straightened in his chair and sighed. "You're right, Squire. Alcohol doesn't solve anything. At best, it is a temporary solution to a permanent problem, and one that does nothing to cure the underlying root of the problem. Alcohol just muddles your mind enough that you forget your problems, but it is better to face the problems head on, so they can be properly resolved."

"What are your problems, sir?" Owen asked, perfectly aware that the odds were high that Wyldon would snap at him for being too inquisitive.

"My first problem is that Vanget wants me to build another fortress where Giantkiller was," responded Wyldon, scratching irritably at the scars that crossed his face.

"Well, surely that isn't unexpected. We can't leave that part of the border unprotected for long, or else the Scanrans will run over us," Owen replied, wondering if it was him or Wyldon that was overlooking the obvious.

"Of course." Wyldon waved an impatient hand. "However, we can't build another fort right on top of Giantkiller's ruins, and Vanget should understand that. Since he doesn't, I have to convince him that it isn't a wise move, as if I don't have enough headaches at the moment."

"Why can't we build a fort where Giantkiller was, sir?" frowned Owen, bewildered.

"The soldiers will think it is bad luck to serve in a fort that is built over the ruins of another where their fellows died mere weeks ago," Wyldon explained, his lips thinning. "Since soldiers are a superstitious bunch, they will desert in troves if we ask them to do that."

"Cowards." Owen scowled.

"Not necessarily." Wyldon shook his head. "As a group, soldiers are probably braver than anyone else, but they require mental reassurances and the illusion of safety as much or more than everybody else. That doesn't make them cowardly; it makes them human. Every group of individuals has their own customs that should be understand by those commanding them, since there are some traditions that people will not tolerate being broken. In this case, soldiers won't tolerate being placed in a fort built over the remains of one that was just destroyed. That makes them no more cowardly than a page who refuses to enter the Chamber of the Ordeal because of the myth that pages who do so never become knights, or a knight who won't go into unless he has a trinket from his lady to protect him from harm. Perhaps all of these rituals are useless, but if people think that they have a meaning, then they should be respected."

Owen still thought that the soldiers were being cowards, but he bit his tongue and asked instead, "What's your second problem, my lord?"

"I have received news that the City of the Gods and Frasrlund have been besieged by the Scanrans and their killing devices."

His words struck Owen like a blow. "What?" he stuttered, appalled. His knees felt like pudding, and, without thinking, he collapsed into the chair opposite his knightmaster. "But Margarry's in the City of the Gods."

"I know." Wyldon sounded defeated as he rubbed a hand over his forehead. He didn't seem to notice that Owen had breached the rules of etiquette by sitting down without permission. "I know, and so is Anwen."

For a moment that spun out into an eternity, they were both silent as they imagined the worst and hoped that it hadn't occurred. Then, Wyldon sighed again, and announced awkwardly, "Owen, as your knightmaster, I suppose that it is my duty to explain to you now that there are two ways to think about loved ones during a war. The first one is spend hours fretting about their welfare, and allowing them to become a distraction. The second one is to use the memories of loved ones as an inspiration to survive so that you can be reunited. As you might have guessed, the first method tends to lead to death, while the second is more likely to allow you to return home. It's best to devote your energy to matters that you can control, and pray to the gods about everything else."

"Yes, sir." Owen found it hard to form the words, as his lips were numb and obstinately refused to move for him. All of him felt cold and unfeeling, as though he were dead already and waiting to be buried. At the moment, he couldn't even experience a thrill at Wyldon's employment of the term "loved ones" which seemed to imply that Wyldon acknowledged on some level that Owen did love his daughter.

Suddenly, he had a compulsion to get up and accomplish something, even if there was nothing he could do to aid Margarry now. As the desire to do something—anything—to take his mind off what might be happening to Margarry right now swamped him, he remembered that he should be reporting for patrol duty with Davis' squad at this time. Shoving himself out of his seat, he said, "I have to go on patrol now, my lord."

At Wyldon's nod, he bowed and turned to leave. He was at the doorway when his knightmaster's voice stopped him. "Oh, and, Jesslaw, don't make any stupid mistakes on patrol today. Now that I've invested so much time and energy into your training, I want you to survive long enough to have your Ordeal."

"Not as much as I do, my lord," Owen assured him earnestly.

"Good." Wyldon waved a hand in dismissal. "Run along, then."

Obediently, Owen raced off to armor himself before joining Davis' squad in the stables. Since their patrols were clashing against the enemy almost everyday now, he tried to stay alert during patrol, and he thought he had done a pretty good job of remaining focused and keeping his distress at bay until he rode back into the stables with Davis' squad.

"Good thing we didn't make any contact with the enemy today," observed Walden as they brushed their horses next to each other. "Otherwise, ye would have done yer part in keepin' our local Stormwing population well fed."

"Was it that obvious that I was upset?" Owen grimaced.

"No, I was exaggeratin'," answered Walden. "It was only apparent to those who know ye well."

"That's nice to hear," Owen remarked, trying to maintain a light tone. "I would hate to die before I could lie with a girl."

"The sad fact is that ye'll probably get to lie with a girl before I will." Walden shrugged, as though this didn't bother him. Then, he pressed, "Do ye feel like tellin' me what has got that dazed look into yer eye?"

"The City of the Gods and Frasrlund have been besieged by the Scanrans and their accursed killing devices," Owen informed him, swallowing the lump that had formed in his throat at the thought. The idea of soldiers surrounding the city Margarry inhabited made his stomach churn, and the knowledge that the killing devices were there caused bile to sear its way up to his mouth. It was even worse to think of her trapped in the convent with the priestesses and the other noble girls learning to be ladies, fearing that the foes would break through their defenses at any minute. Even that paled next to his recognition that Margarry's situation would only worsen. Food would become scarce, and then the fighting and looting within the city would start. Then, when all the food was gone, people would have to eat rats. Once all the rats were gone, the city would have to surrender. All the occupants of the city could do was hope that Tortallan reinforcements would manage to free them before they had to surrender. Being marooned in a city had to be worse than anything Owen had experienced at war so far. At least he could move about, after all.

As he envisioned the horrors a siege entailed, he demanded in a choked tone, "Den, did you see anything regarding the sieges?"

"No." Walden shook his head. "There must not have been enough pain for it to register with me. Maybe once the corpses start pilin' up in the streets I'll be able to sense something."

"Don't say that," Owen hissed. Somehow, he would have been able to bear hearing about the facts of the siege, but he couldn't tolerate someone adding fabricated lurid details to the ghastly images that were already streaming through his skull. "My sweetheart is trapped in the City of the Gods."

"I'm sorry to hear that."

However, Owen wasn't in the mood to listen to apologies. Instead, he burst out desperately, "I love Margarry, Den. What will I do if she dies?"

"I wouldn't worry about that yet," Walden told him after a tense moment's pause.

"I can't help but worry." Owen bit his lip, struggling to find words to describe the maelstrom whirling about inside him. In the end, he went on, "My lord Wyldon told me not to get distracted by the people I love when I can't control what happens to them and I promised him that I wouldn't, but that's easier said than done, isn't it?"

"Aye, I reckon that most things are," agreed Walden, his eyes more somber and shadowed than they normally were.

"I've seen what happens when someone loses the one they love," Owen continued. "Ever since my mother was slaughtered by bandits, my father has been prone to bouts of drunkenness. I don't want to become like that, but I'm afraid that if she dies I'll start ruining my life."

"Ruining yer life wouldn't restore hers," Walden pointed out.

"I know, but my feelings don't listen to reason, and that's the problem," Owen reminded him miserably. "If they did, we wouldn't even need to be having this conversation, because I would be able to push Margarry out of my mind and just focus on doing my duty and surviving. Since I can't do that, I am terrified that if she dies, I won't have the courage to go on. I'm afraid that I will think it is dishonoring her memory."

"Not goin' on livin' after the death of a loved one is a much worse dishonor than goin' on livin' after the death of a loved one," said Walden gently. "If someone really loves ye, they wouldn't want ye to stop livin' just because they snuffed it."

"That worked when my friend Quinton died, but I doubt it will be effective when dealing with the death of the person I fell in love with," Owen dismissed this grimly. "I think everyone only falls in love once, and they get bitter when that only true love is destroyed. The pain is excruciating when life breaks true love, but it's even worse when death does it, because the person who is left behind can't help but raging that death had no business stealing their beloved."

"If ye think that way, Owen, then consider this," Walden murmured after a lengthy pause. "Love is very different from possession. If ye truly love Margarry, then ye would not believe that she belonged to ye. Ye would know that from the moment she was conceived, she belonged to the gods, as everyone does, and that she was only lent to this world. As such, ye wouldn't complain about them takin' back what was rightfully theirs and would thank them for givin' her life in the first place so that ye could meet her at all. If ye really loved her, ye would understand that while death leaves a scar on the heart that nothing can heal, love leaves a memory that nothing, not even death, can steal."

Chewing on his lower lip, Owen mulled over Walden's words. Then, he muttered, "I suppose you're right, and that will be a comfort to me if she dies, but I've decided that if she lives, the first thing I'll do is tell her clearly that I love her in a letter. We've both beat around the bush for ages, but I see that was foolish now, because life is far too short to waste like that. If I declare my love for her, then if I die at least she'll know the truth, and that way, if she dies at least she'll perish knowing what she meant to me."

Before Walden could respond, Owen added, "Now, I am off to pray to any of the listening gods to keep Margarry alive. While I'm praying I'll try not to think of the times I asked for their help only to have my pleas ignored."


	24. Chapter 24

Author's Note: We are pretty far into _Lady Knight_ now, and to be honest, I never really thought that I would be able to keep this story going that long, but I have, obviously. Now, I have taken the slight liberty of essentially cutting out Kel's visit to Fort Mastiff after Giantkiller fell, meaning that it will be mentioned, but it won't be very heavily emphasized at all, because while that part is important for Kel's story, it really isn't critical for Owen's, and I am convinced that it is better for the plot if we move along quicker to the events surrounding Haven's fall (which should happen next chapter if my rough mental outlines hold up). I'm sorry if this causes confusion for any of my readers, but I really think this is the best decision I can make from a stylistic standpoint. If you disagree, by all means tell me in a review. Thanks. I think that is all I have to say for now. (Everyone cheers as I finally shut up.)

Hostage

To his surprise, Owen found that his life went on relatively unaltered despite his worry about Margarry. He continued to run errands for Lord Wyldon and participate in the patrols that daily met the enemy in combat with neither side ever seeming to make any real progress. Most of the time, as horrible as it sounded, he was able to block out thoughts of Margarry, and it was only at night when he was alone in his bed that he would drive himself mad with worry about her. Then, he would feel guilty about not being insane with fear for her the rest of the time, and, after that, he would find it impossible to sleep. Some nights, he would lie there in his bed, staring up into the blackness, and wondering if his life would be that dark if Margarry died. Other nights, he would roam the ramparts for a while before returning to his bed. Either way, he would find that it was usually only a few hours before dawn when he finally drifted off into uneasy sleep that was typically filled with nightmares of Margarry starving to death.

Although Owen suspected that most of the people who saw him on a daily basis noticed the bags under his eyes, nobody ever commented on them, and he never mentioned his fear for Margarry to anyone again after his conversation with Walden. When he talked to everyone, he liked to act as jolly as always so that nobody would know that he wasn't as carefree as he had been as a page. He thought that he was pretty good at concealing his fear that Margarry would die before he could ever tell her that he loved her, because even Kel, who rode in from Haven a few days after Giantkiller fell to report to Lord Wyldon in person, didn't seem to detect much of a change in him. Even when she encountered him crying on the ramparts, much to his embarrassment, she had believed that his tears were all for Ginatkiller's victims. He let her think that, because it sounded selfish to admit that while he was still mourning those who had died at Giantkiller, he was more grieving over one girl whom he didn't even know was dead.

Even though he tried to control his fear for Margarry rather than permit it to dominate him, it was a relief when some solid news about her finally arrived two days after Kel departed. After all, by that point, Owen thought that any knowledge—however awful—about Margarry's condition was better than none, since when there was none, all he could do was imagine the worst.

He had just entered Lord Wyldon's office after patrol, and the sight that greeted him made him gasp, for his knightmaster was staring down at a letter, rubbing his balding head, and muttering, "Thank Mithros. Thank Mithros."

"Should I fetch a healer, my lord?" Owen asked hesitantly, hoping that the man just had a headache and wasn't going around the bend.

"No, I have no need of a healer. I'm fine," answered Lord Wyldon vaguely, looking somewhat surprised to discover that there was anyone in his study at all. Then, as he recognized that the person he was addressing was his squire, he added, "A note just came in from my wife that might be of interest to you."

"Really, sir?" Owen couldn't keep the doubt out of his voice, because he didn't know anything that Lady Vivienne would have to say to her husband that was of any importance to him.

"Indeed, I should think so," Wyldon said, recovering some of his crispness. "My wife writes to me that Anwen and Margarry are with her in Cavall now."

"What?" Owen stared, certain that his ears weren't working properly. "How in the name of Mithros did they end up there?"

"The priestesses," explained Wyldon. "It seems that before the siege began in earnest, there was a brief battle between the men of the City of the Gods and the Scanrans. During the fight, the priestesses took advantage of the confusion to sneak my daughters and those of several other important commanders out of the city dressed as commoners in the company of some stable boys who would be able to protect them if need be. They had to hike through the woods for almost a day before they thought it was safe enough to stop at an inn and hire a cart to transport them. I'm sure it wasn't an easy journey for any of the girls, but at least they are safely tucked away in their homes now."

"I'll—I'll never say anything bad about the priestesses again," whispered Owen, his mind and body going numb as he struggled to process this data.

"There's a promise that I doubt you will be able to keep," Wyldon commented dryly.

"But why did the priestesses have only Margarry, Anwen, and a few other girls escape?" Owen demanded, finding that his brain needed to hear more facts before it could accept any of this new information.

"All of them were children of important commanders," grunted Wyldon. "All would have made valuable hostages if they fell into Scanran hands. The priestesses thought that it was wiser to smuggle them out then to keep them inside the convent. They didn't think that it was prudent to keep girls who would have made such good hostages inside the convent walls and just hope that the Scanrans wouldn't violate the sanctity of the convent."

"But the girls could have been killed escaping the city!" Owen exclaimed, his eyes widening as this horrifying notion occurred to him.

"Yes." Lord Wyldon's lips thinned. "The priestesses were willing to take that risk, and, anyway, they thought that if the girls were to be killed, they would be better off dead than used as bargaining chips. If the girls were dead, there would be no chance that their fathers could be manipulated into committing treason to save their lives."

"Everybody's a strategist." Owen shook his head in disgust. "In other words, they really didn't care about the girls' lives at all."

"I'm sure that they prayed the girls would live, and they did." Lord Wyldon shrugged, as if he didn't mind the brutal trade of a few lives in the hope of saving many, and maybe he didn't. Probably he was too accustomed to making those sort of choices himself as a commander to protest the callous pragmatism of them at this juncture. "I can't fault the priestesses for making the same decision that I would make in their shoes, and I can only thank them for saving my daughters."

At this point, the fact that Margarry was really safe in Cavall rammed into his head with the might of a rock hurled from a catapult, and he found himself feeling giddy with delight. He would not have to go mad fretting about Margarry. He would not have to be torn apart by guilt at the fact that he wasn't going insane from fear. He would be able to sleep more soundly at night. He would be able to tell her that he loved her, and, maybe, if the gods smiled on him, he would even be able to hear back that she loved him.

Suddenly, he felt remorse for celebrating so much when hundreds of people were still trapped inside the City of the Gods, facing starvation. Yet, even that thought wasn't enough to stifle his elation. For some reason, he discovered that it was difficult to feel too much sorrow for beings that he had never known when someone he had loved had just been saved. As nasty as it sounded, there was an awareness deep inside him that not everyone could be rescued and that he would rather someone he cared about personally was saved.

"My lord, if Margarry were held hostage, what would you do?" Owen asked, trying to take his mind off the ugly self-insight that had just coursed through him.

Lord Wyldon scowled, and Owen was convinced that the man would snap that this was none of his business. In the end, however, Wyldon responded shortly, "I would ask for permission to send some men to rescue her. If it was granted, I would save her."

"What if it wasn't?" Owen pressed.

"Then I can't honestly say what I would do," admitted Lord Wyldon bluntly after a moment's hesitation. "Duty would dictate that I obey my orders, but every gut instinct of mine would want to save her, and I can't definitively state which impulse would win out."

"Lucky you never had to make that choice, then," Owen said, "but I know what I would do."

"Do you really?" Lord Wyldon's eyebrows arched. "What would you do in such a complicated situation, then?"

"I'd rescue Margarry, because I love her and I would hate myself if I didn't at least try to save her," Owen burst out. "I wouldn't care if I abandoned everyone else in the country to do that, because sometimes you have to look out for your own just like everybody else does. Maybe that's the selfish decision, but it feels a lot better than sentencing a loved one to death by doing nothing to save them."

"Humph." Thoughtfully, Wyldon fingered the scars that marred his face. "Perhaps there is no such thing as a selfless act, anyway. After all, I got these scars when I protected the younger princes and princess from hurrocks. Everybody believes that what I did that day was motivated by duty to Tortall and to the royal family. That's certainly a part of it, but another part of it was simply a father's instinct to shield his children. Part of it was nothing more than me thinking that if my daughters were threatened by monsters, I would want someone else to defend them, and, knowing that, I couldn't fail to protect the princes and princesses to the best of my abilities. I don't know if that makes what I did more or less noble, but maybe it was Mithros' idea of justice to have someone else save my daughters as I rescued the royal children."

"The priestesses didn't exactly save your daughters," Owen grumbled, feeling that what the priestesses had done wasn't anywhere near as brave or noble as what his knightmaster had done when he protected the royal children from the hurrocks.

"I thought you weren't going to speak ill of them again, Squire," Lord Wyldon pointed out sharply. "Besides, on a cosmic scale, I don't suppose that many equations balance out perfectly, so we would be fools to spend our whole lives complaining about that."

Owen didn't know how to answer this, but he was spared the necessity of doing so when Lord Wyldon thrust an envelope at him, saying, "This arrived from Cavall for you along with Vivienne's letter."

Glancing down at it, Owen saw that, as he had surmised, it was addressed to him in Margarry's handwriting. "May I go, my lord?" he wanted to know, his veins throbbing with the need to read and reply to her note.

"You might as well." Lord Wyldon waved a hand in dismissal. "After all, I know perfectly well that you will not focus on anything properly until you have done so."

"Thank you, sir." Ignoring the second half of his knightmaster's remark, Owen bowed hurriedly before racing out of the study. He didn't slow his pace until he rushed into his room and collapsed on his bed to read Margarry's letter. Quickly, he slit the envelope, unfolded the paper, and began to read:

_Dear Owen, _

_I sincerely hope that this letter finds you well, and I hope that you haven't gotten too many headaches from worrying about me, because I am fine. (If you got no headaches from worrying about me, I would have to wonder where your passion is.) I trust that you have heard about the siege on the City of the Gods, so I won't dwell too much upon that in part because I revisit it enough in my nightmares, and I don't want to give you any more nightmares than you probably already have. Mother tells me that she has written to Father explaining that Anwen and I are safe, and I hope that Father has seen fit to share that information with you, but, in case he hasn't, I decided to tell you to ease your mind. _

_Of course, my actions aren't entirely noble in this matter, since the story of how I came to escape from the City of the Gods and return to Cavall is a rather thrilling story, and one that I do not trust either of my parents to relate with the justice that it deserves. It starts in the battle before the city came under siege by the Scanrans. While the screams of citizens filled the streets and flaming arrows hit thatch buildings, setting them on fire, the chief priestess summoned Anwen, Emilia, Nerissa, Nelly, Victoria, and myself to her chambers. As soon as we arrived, she shoved ragged commoner dresses into each of our hands and ordered us to change into them. As we obeyed, and Emilia and Victoria who are the most obsessed with fashion of the six of us girls complained about the clothing they were being compelled to wear, she explained that we were to escape the convent with only a few stable lads as protection. _

_I won't lie and say that I wasn't as sacred as the other girls, Owen, and I protested that I didn't want to leave. Yes, I knew that the whole city was endangered, but it felt safer to remain in a large group, and I didn't wish to be separated from my friends, anyhow. I thought that if I was with my friends, things would be bearable, and we would find a way to survive together. _

_However, the priestess explained to me in a rush that all the girls she had summoned were the children of important commanders, and that if we were taken captive, we would be used as bargaining chips against our fathers. That decided me. I don't like to think that my father would choose to save me at the expense of the country or something, but I wouldn't like to die with the knowledge that he had abandoned me, nor would I desire to force him to pick between me and his duty and feel guilty for the rest of his life as a result no matter which decision he made. As such, I knew that I had to try to escape, even if I might die in the attempt. After all, I think it is better to die than live to see yourself used as a weapon against those you love. Indeed, I believe that if I were ever taken hostage, I should find a manner in which to do myself in. That way, while I might not gain peace in the afterlife for committing suicide, at least someone I loved wouldn't be tortured by guilt for the rest of their life. _

_Anyway, once we had donned our disguises, we crept out of the convent in the company of the hostlers. We hurried through the chaos of the streets, and I had to shake poor Anwan a lot to prevent her from freezing up. After all, not only has she not been out in the real world for many years, but the mayhem engulfing the city was enough to make even those accustomed to the bustle of the city panic. Finally, we managed to escape from the city gates and make a run for the safety of the forest. _

_All of us were fleeing as fast as we could, Owen, and I don't know how our ragtag group stayed together, but we did, and it was fortunate that so many people were running away from the city that the Scanrans couldn't chop down everyone. Somehow, all of us girls and our escorts reached the relative safety of the woods. _

_Even then, we didn't slow our pace, because we couldn't afford to. Our hearts were pounding so loudly in our chests that we were all convinced that that the enemy was following us, and we couldn't take the chance of believing otherwise. Our lungs got tired of working so rapidly, because none of us were used to taxing them that much, and I am starting to think that Father's lectures on the benefits of running daily have some truth to them, after all. We couldn't get enough air, and our muscles began to protest. Yet, still we didn't stop. Somehow, we all found the strength to keep going, and none of us felt like wasting our breath to curse. _

_We ran for hours, and the soles of our feet became caked with dirt, because we hadn't worn shoes when we fled the city, since the priestesses thought that would make us too conspicuous when we ran away. Then, the earth was mixed with blood from the scrapes that appeared on our feet when we dashed over stones. _

_By the end of our journey, though, our feet weren't the only parts of our body stained with blood, though, for our faces, arms, and legs were lined with scratches from where the branches of trees and bushes had brushed against us while we raced through the forest. Even our hands were battered from when we had stumbled and fallen when we had tripped in our haste only to shove ourselves upright and keep running. _

_Finally, when our bodies refused to move another muscle, we collapsed by a stream, where we refreshed ourselves with some water and berries, which have never tasted so sweet to me, Owen. Then, feeling somewhat rejuvenated, we continued to run until we reached an inn. _

_By that time, we had decided that we had put enough distance between ourselves and the Scanrans that we could afford to stop at the inn to rest and hire a cart to return us to our homes. I will say that a fatty stew served by a tavern owner was never more delicious and that a bed filled with bugs that I had to share with Anwen was never more comfortable. It should also be noted that after running for what felt like an eternity, even Emilia and Victoria did not complain about their bumpy ride back to their home fiefs. _

_Now that I am back in Cavall, I am spending most of my days sewing clothes, tapestries, and other decorations for my friend Thalia's wedding, which will probably have to be put off as a result of the siege. While I sew, I pray that Thalia, the other girls remaining at the convent, and everyone else trapped in the City of the Gods will survive the siege. I wish daily that I could send them food and supplies, but that is not a viable option, since if it were, the City of the Gods would not be under siege in the first place._

_Most of my nights are spent consoling a sobbing and trembling Anwen, who has been even more traumatized by the mayhem of the city of and the battle as we fled the convent and by the physical pressure that we were under when we ran through the forest. After this, I am not sure that she will ever be comfortable even at the convent again, and, if that is so, I don't know where my poor sister will find a safe haven for herself. _

_Hoping that the Great Mother will keep you in her not always tender care as she has me,_

_Margarry_


	25. Chapter 25

Author's Note: Everybody who is still brave and kind enough to keep trudging through this fic, I'm sorry about the long delay that existed between posts. I have no real excuse except a fickle Muse that really didn't want to write this chapter at all. This isn't my favorite chapter that I have ever written, but at least it's something, and it will move the plot along toward the Scanran adventures, which I believe most if not all of us are looking forward to. Also, since some of you may not remember where we are in this fic in terms of the Tortallan timeline as it has been an eon since I last updated, we are at around the time of Haven's fall.

Nightmares

A hard, sharp rap on Owen's door jolted him out of a very pleasant dream he was having about Margarry. Cursing incoherently under his breath, he stumbled out of bed, wrenched open the door, and demanded of the bleary-eyed soldier before him, "What?"

Sometimes his natural bluntness caused him to be rude unintentionally when all he wanted was to be honest, but right now he was being rude on purpose. Simply put, he was too tired to bother with manners at this unholy hour. When it required an act of will to keep his eyes from closing, his groggy brain relegated politeness to its proper location on his priority list—as item thirty on a list that had only twenty-five things on it.

Luckily, the soldier himself seemed too harried to be miffed by Owen's brusqueness, for all the soldier said was, "Lord Wyldon wants to see ye in his study at once."

"Does that man ever sleep?" Owen grumbled, not really expecting a response from the soldier he was still harboring a faint hostility towards on account of being awakened at this ungodly hour. While he posed this almost rhetorical question, he moved across his room with all the haste he could muster at the moment and grabbed his boots from beside his bed.

"I wouldn't be knowin' about that. I'm naught but a common-blooded killer, remember?" responded the soldier, as Owen put on his boots. "Ye're his squire. Ye should know the answer to that better than me."

Ignoring this, Owen brushed past the soldier and charged down the hallway. Once he was outside, he ran towards the headquarters, where Lord Wyldon's office was. Now that his mind was awake enough to function, he was in a real rush, since he had realized that his knightmaster wouldn't have summoned him at this time unless something important had happened.

As he neared Wyldon's office, he found himself running alongside several of Mastiff's officers, Kel, Neal, and some of the officers from Haven, who had all arrived at Fort Mastiff to talk tactics with Lord Wyldon. If that alone hadn't been enough to raise alarm bells in Owen's bloodstream, the sight that greeted them when they barged into Wyldon's office was certainly enough to do so.

Halting abruptly behind Kel and trying to catch his breath, Owen saw his knightmaster, dressed in a nightshirt and breeches, sitting before the hearth, helping a ragged boy grasp a steaming mug. The boy bore an uncanny resemblance to Kel's servant, and Owen felt his stomach knot.

Well, at least he now had an answer to his earlier question about whether Wyldon slept, because, based on the man's attire, it did seem like his knightmaster slept, after all. Of course, that wasn't really so shocking considering that even the gods and goddesses slept, or at least in Owen's mind they did. Slumbering deities were his explanation now for why good things happened to bad people and why bad things befell good ones…

And, yes, he had certainly noticed that he had taken refuge in the small details, which would allow him to focus on them and ignore the big picture. If he paid attention to trivialities, he wouldn't have to think about the implications of the fact that Kel's servant boy had shown up in disarray at this hour. After all, Owen didn't regard himself as a great mathematician, but even he could add up the appearance of Kel's servant and the time of his arrival and get an answer that equaled at least an attack on Haven by the Scanrans.

As all this spiraled through Owen's head, the servant boy glanced up from his mug, revealing a face as scratched as his clothing was tattered. His eyes widened as they lit upon Kel, and it was lucky that Wyldon had been gripping the mug, because Kel's servant boy launched himself at her.

"Lady!" he cried, flinging his arms around her waist and burying his face in her nightclothes.

Watching a boy of roughly his age break down like this, Owen modified his earlier mental math. Now, his equation stated that the boy's battered condition combined with the time of his arrival equaled the fall of Haven and who knew how many dead and captured.

Standing up and putting down the mug, Wyldon said crisply to his officers, "I'll take Company Eight and Company Six. Battle mages, twenty scouts."

As his officers nodded, Wyldon went on, "Jesslaw?"

"Sir!" Owen tried to make his voice sound confident and like he could handle anything that he was asked to do. As horrible as it was to see the carnage at Haven, it would be infinitely worse not to see it. If he never saw it, he would have to imagine what it was like and he would have to live with the humiliation of Wyldon believing he didn't have the strength to see what had occurred at Haven.

"Get me a clerk, and messengers for Northwatch, the garrison near Giantkiller, and Steadfast," ordered Wyldon, and Owen spun on his heel and hurried out of the office over to the lower level of the officer's quarters, where the clerks and messengers lived.

Not having the time to be selective about whom he picked, Owen knocked first clerk's door he came to and the first three messengers' doors he came to. Each time he rapped on a door, he was met with stony stares and mumbled curses, but the clerk and the three messengers didn't dare to refuse Lord Wyldon's summons. With varying degrees of good grace, they joined Owen as he rushed back to Wyldon's office.

"Sir, I've got the clerk and the messengers," he shouted, as he burst into the room.

"Change and arm up, then," commanded Lord Wyldon, who had already done so himself. "Both of our horses are being saddled, so don't waste time with that."

As he headed off to his chamber to change and arm up, Owen heard Lord Wyldon instructing the clerk and the messengers.

Despite all their haste, the sun was still rising, as they left Fort Mastiff. As they moved through the forest, which was eerily quiet because wild creatures always fled when the killing devices came, with one company fanning out to check the woodlands for enemies that had long since disappeared, Owen tried not to think about how the rising sun painted everything a light red, as though it were tingeing the earth with blood.

When they emerged from the woods onto the flatlands where Haven was built, the wind carried the scent of smoke and Stormwing to them. Wrinkling his nose, Owen deliberately blocked out the thoughts of ruin and death that must have produced these odors. Unfortunately, the nauseating smells only became more overpowering as they approached the refugee camp.

A refugee camp. The word sounded over and over through Owen's head. Not a fort. That meant that most of the dead would civilians and not soldiers. Giantkiller had been bad enough, but Haven would be even worse. At least most of the Giantkiller dead had been soldiers who had received enough training to be able to truly defend themselves against the Scanrans…However, he wasn't going to travel down that lane now. He would not get too emotional before he had even laid eyes on the carnage in the camp, for Mithros sake.

Still, he couldn't prevent a small fire of impotent anger and hatred for the Scanrans from welling up inside him, and his fists clenched when they reached the crossing with the road to Fort Giantkiller and saw that the road was a mess of churned mud bearing the imprints of hooves and wagon wheels, which meant that the enemy had driven through relatively recently.

His mind busy devising all the painful ways he would kill King Maggot and his evil scourge of a sorcerer who created the hideous killing devices, Owen heard from what seemed like leagues away his knightmaster dispatch Company Eight to follow the tracks left by the retreating Scanrans, and the couriers to report to Northwatch and the other district forts.

Then, when Wyldon gestured for Kel to lead them into Haven, Owen was glad that his brain was still dwelling on how much he would love to disembowel the man who invented the killing devices. It kept some of the horror of seeing corpses lining the path into the camp and the smoking buildings with their missing doors and chopped off shutters.

"Dismount and fan out." At Wyldon's command, Owen bullied his muscles into moving and climbed off his horse. "Let's have the wounded and the dead laid out here by the gate. Search every building."

Thinking that maybe it would have been preferable to have been left behind after all, Owen found that his feet wouldn't carry him toward any of the smoking buildings. He didn't know how long he stood frozen in place before a hand tapped against his shoulder. He found himself looking at Sebastian Moonan, a scrawny sergeant in Sixth Company whom Owen knew the name of but not much else about.

"Ye got a search partner, Squire?" he asked.

"No." Owen shook his head.

"Neither have I." Sebastian offered a ghost of a smile that revealed two missing teeth from a mouth that seemed to be filled with rotting ones that nearly made Owen cringe. "Let's work together, then."

"Fine," Owen agreed, his leaden feet following Sebastian into a long building that looked like it had once served as a barracks. As the words left his lips, he realized how ridiculous they sounded in a building that was filled with broken possessions and the chopped up corpses of citizens who had obviously engaged in a desperate last stand to save themselves and their families and had paid for their courage with their lives. No, nothing was fine anymore, and this looted barracks proved that.

Fine was the last word that could be used to describe this scene he thought as he gazed down at the body of a young man that was already starting to rot. Remembering for some bizarre reason Sebastian's rotting teeth, Owen wondered for a second if everything in the world was rotting, because that was how it felt at the moment.

"We should start movin' these corpses," said Sebastian, bending over the body of a plump woman who, by the looks of it, had tried to fend off the Scanrans with a carving knife.

Obediently, Owen leaned over and helped Sebastian scoop up her body, trying not to think about how this woman must have cooked and cleaned for her family. He wouldn't think about how she had probably had children that she tucked into bed at night, and he wouldn't consider the fact that if she had known the night before she died that she was going to perish, she probably would have held onto her children and never released them. All he would tell himself was that the Black God had taken her to his realm for a reason. Maybe the Black God's realm needed some more mothers to look after all the young soldiers that had been killed in the war recently.

Still, as they carried her body out of the barracks, Owen couldn't escape the sensation that he was living in a nightmare, nor could he stop wishing that someday soon the Black God would decide that his kingdom needed some slimy, cowardly bastards and snatch the lives of King Maggot and the evil mage who created the killing monsters.


	26. Chapter 26

Treason

The only warning Owen had that Walden was going to vomit was when his ashen face turned green. As quickly as he could, Owen snatched the pewter basin from the table beside Walden's bed and thrust it under the man's chin just in time for the man to throw up into it.

"Ye don't have to do this," Walden choked out between bursts of vomiting.

"What should I do, then?" demanded Owen, as Walden stopped throwing up for now, and he tentatively took the bowl away from him. "Just sit here and watch you throw up your guts without doing anything to help you? My manners are far from perfect but somehow I don't think that is entirely polite."

"Ye don't have to be here at all," pointed out Walden, as Owen stood up to take the basin to an infirmary maid to clean and get another basin instead.

"I want to be here," Owen answered firmly, exiting the room that Walden shared with two sleeping soldiers who had also been injured when Eighth Company had held at bay four killing devices when they had been attacked on the road to Giantkiller. He made his way down the hallway until he reached the infirmary maid at the end of the corridor.

"Let me guess," she said calmly as he approached her. "Ye wanna trade basins."

"That sounds jolly," Owen agreed, grinning as he offered her the vomit filled basin, relieved to get the stinky thing out of his hands.

"Here ye are then," the young woman replied, handing him the basin she had been rubbing with a towel, and accepting the dirty one in exchange. "It isn't polished, but it's clean, and that's all that really matters, I suppose."

"There's no point in polishing something that will get filthy again within an hour." Owen nodded. "It's even sillier than making your bed when you know that you'll get it all messed up again when you go to sleep at night."

As he walked away, Owen thought he heard her mutter under her breath, "Men." Smiling again, he stepped into Walden's room and sat down on the wooden chair beside his bed once more.

"Why did I let that healer bully me into drinking a bowl of broth anyway?" Walden grumbled as Owen settled into the seat next to his bed. "I wasn't hungry, and it just made me vomit."

"You need to eat something to keep up your strength if you want to get better," Owen reminded him.

"Now ye sound like a healer," snorted Walden.

"Occupational hazard of being a friend of one." Thinking of Neal, Owen shrugged.

"Humph," Walden grunted and stared at the clapboard wall across from him for a moment before sighing. "Well, I guess I shouldn't complain about them so much. At least their magic is good for something. Mine just got me distracted in a battle against a killin' device by a vision of one of them Haven refugees dyin' in childbirth when them Scanrans wouldn't stop for her to give birth, and Seth had to pull me away from the action before I could sustain an injury any worse than a belly wound."

"A belly wound is serious enough," Owen said, grimacing. "Only about forty percent of people who get them end up recovering."

"If ye get to see a healer as soon as I did, the number is sixty percent." Walden's tone was dispassionate as if they were discussing the fatality odds of some stranger. "The healer said I was lucky, too, that it wasn't an inch lower that I was cut by a Scanran sword."

"I guess Mithros must have shielded you," Owen murmured.

"Perhaps, but Seth did his part, as well," observed Walden, his eyes closing as he rested against his pillow. "Of course, ye can always claim that any good deed that any of us does ultimately comes from the gods, and that without their grace no good deeds are possible."

"I don't think it matters, as long as the good deed is done." Owen shook his head. "Seth is such a tough, cynical misery guts, though, that maybe that grace theory has some truth behind it. It's easier to imagine Mithros taking over his body or something than to imagine Seth doing something charitable."

"I don't know." Walden's shoulders heaved up and down in a faint movement that Owen assumed was meant to function as a shrug. "We should try to be as merciful in our judgments of others as we would like them to be when they are doin' the judgin' of us. I think that cynics feel as much or more than the rest of us, and they are just afraid of the power that their feelin's have over them, so they create sarcastic masks to cover their true natures."

"So a cynic is just as sentimentalist afraid of himself in your eyes," Owen remarked, again thinking of Neal and feeling that this definition fit pretty well.

"That very well could be the case." Walden's shoulders jerked upward and downward slightly in their shrugging gesture again. "I don't know. All I know is that since Seth saved me he hasn't spoken to me, visited me, or looked in me eyes."

"That's not very nice," muttered Owen.

"It's as if he is scared to admit to himself or anyone else what he has done," Walden went on softly, ignoring Owen. "In a way, maybe that makes what he did more noble, since he doesn't want any thanks or any attention for what he did. When he did a good deed, he wasn't lookin' to get any credit for it. I wonder how many people can say that."

"Not many," admitted Owen. Deciding that he didn't want to think about the implications of that, he said in a determinedly cheery voice, "Well, I know that Seth hasn't been into see you, but has any of Davis' squad checked in on you?"

"Aye." Walden nodded. "Lucian did. He came bearin' news, too. One of them Haven convicts was brought up in his village, apparently, and Lucian had it from him that the Lady Knight ran off."

"What?" Stunned, Owen could only gape at Walden, sure that he had misheard.

"The Lady Knight was supposed to bury her dead, and then report here with Sergeants Connac and Hevlor, but she gave them the slip and went off on a mission to save her people," explained Walden.

"That's crazy," Owen stuttered. The idea of Kel, who had always been so committed to doing her duty no matter what it cost her, deserting was nearly impossible to wrap his mind around. Then again, ever since he had first met her when she was a page who had defended him against bullies, Kel had felt the urge to stand up for those weaker than herself. That's what she thought being a knight and being a noble was all about. That's why Owen thought of her as his hero—or heroine, since she was, in fact, a girl. That's why when push came to shove, Kel's duty to those below her would always mean more to her than her obligations to those above her. That's why she would never decide to save herself at the expense of saving others. "That's treason! Oh, Mithros, I have to see Merric now. I'll see you later, Den."

Before Walden could reply, Owen had rushed out of the room. It was just as well that Walden hadn't gotten a chance to answer Owen thought as he hurried down the hallway to Merric's room, because he might have asked Owen when he would be back, and that was a question that he couldn't answer. After all, Owen had already decided that whatever happened he would be going after Kel, and who knew when he would be getting back. Besides, when he did get back, odds were good that he would be locked up and not allowed to visit friends in the infirmary.

When Owen burst into Merric's room, he was relieved to see that Neal, Seaver, and Esmond were already clustered around Merric's bed, and that they seemed to have just finished explaining Kel's disappearance, for Merric was protesting numbly, "But that's treason! Deserting in the face of the enemy, that's what they'll call it. She'll have destroyed her life, just for commoners."

Not liking the way Merric's comment about commoners sounded, since he had a lot of friends among the lower classes now, Owen reminded him shortly, "She cares about commoners."

She cared about everyone, especially those who everybody else thought were worthless. That's what made her so special. Anyone who didn't know that didn't know her at all and could never comprehend what she had done.

"And these were her people," Neal added. "She promised she'd protect them. You know how she is. She's been jumpy all summer, worried something like this would happen."

"She was afeared," a small voice agreed from the corner. His eyes widening, Owen turned around to see Kel's servant boy standing there. Owen must have missed seeing him when he walked in. "She was dreaming all the time, talking in her sleep about slaves, an' Blayce, an' death magic."

Owen had no idea how to translate this gibberish into a language he understood, but luckily Neal was ahead of him.

"The killing devices," Neal gasped, his jaw dropping. "She thinks the Scanrans took her people for Blayce to use."

"You can make a lot of killing devices with five hundred people, or even just two hundred children." Owen felt that his lips had turned to wood as he did the mental mouth and found that the results made his stomach churn.

"She thinks she can retake them alone?" demanded Merric, his voice rising incredulously.

"She'll try," Neal pronounced grimly. "Even if she loses her shield."

"Or her life," Owen whispered and wondered where the traitorously pessimistic notion had come from. Kel wouldn't die, he told himself. She couldn't. It wasn't fair for the Black God to deny the world of her goodness so soon.

"We can't let her," Seaver hissed, his tone quiet but fervent. "She's saved all of our lives at one time or another." Remembering the bandit incident, Owen knew that he definitely owed Kel a life debt, and that only increased his need to go after her. "At the very least we can bash her on the head and bring her back. We'll tell people that the men got it wrong, and she was ambushed by the enemy. My lord won't ask questions if we move fast."

"Are you mad?" gasped Merric. "Break your vows to the Crown? If you stay out too long, you'll be guilty of treason, too."

"Nobody asked you to go," Seaver snapped, looking at Merric with all the scorn that Owen felt. "And I know we are talking treason here. That's why we need to move fast."

Deciding that now was a time when Seaver would benefit from some support, Owen said, "I'm going."

The impact that those two simple words had on everyone in room was enormous, for suddenly his four friends were all staring at him as if he had gone made. "No!" they all shouted in unison.

Before Owen could shout back, a healer burst into the room, her eyes blazing, as she scolded, "If you can't be quiet, get out. I have people who need rest, including you, Sir Merric."

"We'll be quiet," Neal assured her, healer to healer. "We're sorry. It won't happen again."

"I'll kick you out if it does," she warned. She glared at them for a moment longer, and then spun on her heel and left, shutting the door behind her.

Once he was sure she was out of earshot, Esmond told Owen, "You'll be twice foresworn if you try it. Not only would be you be a traitor to the Crown, you'll break faith with my lord Wyldon."

"I know," he whispered, staring at the floor. He had figured that out all of two seconds after he had decided that he would go after Kel. Practically, it made no difference, since the punishment for treason was death, and, not having two lives, he couldn't die twice. Emotionally, though it was a different story. Betraying his country was awful, but betraying Wyldon as well just made it even worse.

He hated the idea of committing treason to remain loyal to Kel. He felt sick just thinking about giving up his dreams and probably his life for her sake. He hated the fact that he would never know the answer to the letter that he had sent Margarry, telling her plainly at last that he loved her. It nauseated him that if he didn't commit treason in the name of friendship, that would make him more of a selfish coward than if he betrayed his country and his knightmaster.

He wished that things didn't have to be this complicated. He wished that the law wasn't so black and white. He wished that it took into account the shades of gray that existed in a circumstance like this. It didn't, though, and he made his choice knowing that, and, even knowing that by law he was guilty, his conscience was clear at least as far as the law was concerned.

After all, the law wasn't always right, and so to break it wasn't always wrong. Sometimes you had to follow your heart even if you knew it would kill you, and someone who turned his back on his friend wouldn't have made a very loyal servant of the Crown, anyway.

Besides, the law and the Crown were rather abstract concepts that he couldn't feel as devoted to as he did to a living, breathing person that he was familiar with. Maybe that's why the thought of betraying Lord Wyldon stung him a lot more than the thought of betraying his country.

He could only hope that Wyldon would understand that there was no malice and nothing personal behind his betrayal. He prayed that Wyldon would comprehend that Owen respected him immensely, but Kel had needed Owen more. Owen could handle whatever punishment Wyldon handed down as long as he could tell himself that Wyldon was acting out of an obligation to the Crown. If he knew that whatever they ended up doing to each other, it was only out of duty, he could deal with the consequences of his actions. As long as Wyldon understood the reasons behind what he had done, Owen didn't mind being punished.

From a distance, Owen heard the other occupants of the room debating among themselves about whether to go after Kel and when to do so, and he took advantage of their argument to sneak out of the room. He had a lot of work that he needed to do if he wanted to leave tonight after Kel, which he did, and there was no time to waste… He would need to find some food from the kitchens, because going into battle on an empty stomach was never a bright idea, and while he was there, he could see about stealing a jar of lard to grease the hinges of the escape hatch in the stable.

Then, he would also need to procure a map of the land from headquarters if he could manage it, and on a whole, he thought he could. After all, one of the perks of being Lord Wyldon's squire was that few people took notice of or questioned his actions, since they always assumed that he was acting on orders from Wyldon. Of course, most of the time he was, but this time he wasn't.

This time, he was going rogue. Now, he was moving into unchartered territory as he followed Kel's lead, content to come toppling down with her if she fell.


	27. Chapter 27

Fugitives

On any other night, Owen would have been asleep by now, but now the idea of resting seemed as foreign to him as any of the most bizarre Yamani customs that Kel had described to him over the years. He had packed some clothes, food, the weapons that weren't on him, and a map in a rucksack that he had dumped on his bed, and he was now staring blankly at an equally empty piece of parchment before him.

For some reason, even though he knew that once his disappearance was noted in the morning, that Lord Wyldon would be able to figure out without too much disturbance of brain tissue that he had gone off after Kel, Owen felt the need to explain himself. Oddly enough, it seemed to him that while his actions may have been obvious, the motives behind his behavior would be less clear. Maybe his explanation would make little difference in the long run, because Wyldon would probably still feel obligated to turn him over to the Crown for committing treason, but it felt like common courtesy to at least provide some explanation.

Unfortunately, resolving to leave a letter behind was the easy part. The hard part was determining what exactly to write. Clarifying why you had deserted was something that required a considerable amount of tact.

Sadly, as anyone who had ever met Owen was well aware, his tact rivaled that of a charging boar's, so tact wasn't a course open to him right now. That meant that he was stuck with raw honesty.

Steeling himself with the thought that while honesty might be offensive, the whole point of explaining himself to Wyldon would be nullified if he didn't tell the truth, he wrote:

_My lord:_

_If you're reading this, then you will already know that I have disappeared, and you will probably have already figured out that I have gone after Kel, so I won't waste either of our time with that. Instead, I will explain why I acted the way I did._

_I know as well as you do that by running away like this I'm betraying both you and Tortall. I won't lie and say that the mere thought of doing those things doesn't hurt me, and I won't pretend that I wouldn't normally be the first person to spit on traitors as cowards, but I can't help becoming a traitor. If I stay here, I betray Kel, but if I go, I turn my back on you and Tortall._

_Under the circumstances, sir, whatever I decide to do will be wrong, and whatever choice I make will end up injuring somebody. It just becomes a question of who will be hurt more by my abandoning them. That's why I have to go after Kel, because she needs me more. You have entire companies at your disposal, but she doesn't, and she needs all the help she can get._

_I'm well aware that you think explanations are excuses, my lord, and that you don't want to hear them, but this explanation isn't an excuse. I'm not giving this explanation to save my own skin, since I don't suppose that I have the right to ask for clemency when I knew the consequences of my actions when I did what I did. I'm only writing this letter because I think you deserve to know the truth that there was nothing personal about my running off like this._

_I just want you to know that, whatever anyone else thinks or says, I was trying to do the right thing, not the wrong thing, when I committed treason like this. I expect that you'll still be cross with me, sir, and I won't claim that you don't have a right to be. After all, if someone ran off on me like this, I'd probably be mad, too. I just hope that you'll be able to understand what I did even if you still have to punish me for my actions._

_Speaking of punishments, you should also know that I promise to come back as long as I don't die and face the consequences of what I did. I am not so much of a coward that I would try to avoid justice for breaking laws on purpose._

Here, he paused, not knowing how to conclude such an awkward letter. In the end, he settled for a simple: _Mithros guard you, Owen._

Suspecting that Wyldon would probably regard the closing and most likely the whole note as far too informal at best, but not having time to fix anything since time was a commodity that he didn't have at the moment, Owen placed the letter on his pillow.

With a prayer to all the gods and goddesses that he could think of at the moment that the note would only be discovered after Neal and the others had departed, assuming that they were indeed coming, Owen snatched up his bundle. Then, he exited his room as quietly as possible as the night watch called out that it was midnight.

Keeping to the shadows as much as he could, although he doubted that anyone would be moving around at this hour to see him, Owen crept down the hallway and out of the building he slept in onto the main ground of the fort. Once outside, he kept up his policy of remaining in the shadows so that the night watch wouldn't be able to see him, even though he suspected that the sentries would be looking for unusual activity outside the fort rather than inside it.

As he approached the stairs up to the inner walls of the ramparts, he saw a figure on the bottom step. Reflexively, Owen halted and quieted his breathing, as he stared at the figure. When he realized that the figure was shaped like Kel's servant, he relaxed. He could count on Kel's servant not to report him, and he could guess that Kel's servant was trying to escape from Mastiff to go after Kel, just as he was. That was good—Kel needed all the support that she could get.

However, Kel's servant didn't know about the secret passage out of the stables, as Owen did, and the other boy was obviously trying to climb over the walls, which, as far as Owen was concerned, wouldn't do at all.

Stepping out from behind the wall he had ducked behind, Owen tapped Kel's servant on the shoulder, trying to make it plain from the softness of the tap that he was a friend and not a foe. As soon as Owen touched him, Kel's servant spun around, and before he could make any noise of shock, Owen whispered, "Not that way. Come on."

For a few seconds, Kel's servant hesitated, and then he seemed to decide that he and Owen were on the same side and that Owen could be trusted, because he fell into step behind Owen. Together, they moved through the shadows to the stables and opened the doors as silently as possible.

Once they were in the stables, they split up without any need to confer with Owen going off to saddle Happy and Kel's servant disappearing into Peachblossom's stall to saddle the most pugnacious gelding that Owen had ever had the misfortune of encountering. As he readied Happy, Owen thanked Mithros for sparing him the task of saddling Peachblossom. Although he had managed to convince himself that Peachblossom would permit him to saddle him if he explained Kel's situation adequately, he was perfectly content to be denied the opportunity to test his theory, as well as saved from sustaining several new Peachblossom bites.

When the horses were saddled, Owen raised the section of the stable floor that was really a gate into an escape tunnel as soundlessly as he could. Then, while Kel's servant led the horses into the passage, Owen gathered up their packs and followed along behind him, closing the door as softly as possible in their wake.

The tunnel brought them out in the woods to the side of the camp. Hoping that their luck would hold and that the guards would continue not to notice their presence, they moved cautiously through the woods. Once they thought they had put enough distance between themselves and Mastiff, they came out onto the dusty road, where they would make better time.

"So, you do have your uses, after all, Squire," Kel's servant commented stiffly when they were on the road, and felt comfortable talking, and Owen was surprised to hear how good the boy's diction was. "That tunnel was helpful."

"You should just call me Owen," he answered, surprised at the other boy's tone and wondering what he had done to offend him, since they hardly knew each other. "That's what most people call me, and I don't really think that traitors have much of a rank, anyway."

There was a heavy pause, and Owen wished that the moonlight and starlight would allow him to see his companion's features better. Then, just when Owen was starting to think that there would be no response, the other boy grunted, "You can call me Tobe, then."

"Tobe, I get the feeling that you don't like me very much," Owen observed, figuring that he might as well lance the boil right away. In a situation when they were not only going behind enemy lines, but also hiding from their own countrymen, they couldn't afford to tear themselves apart. They needed to cooperate and save all their hostility for Blayce. "I don't know why, but I think that you should just put the issue behind you. We're on the same side now."

"No," Tobe replied simply. "We aren't."

"Of course we are." Owen nearly yanked Happy to a halt he was so astonished. "We're both trying to help Kel, because we both care about what happens to her. That's why I helped you escape from Mastiff."

"We aren't on the same side," Tobe insisted. "If we were on the same side, we'd have the same goals, and we don't. You care about Lady like I do, yes, but she's all you care about in this expedition. That's not the case with me. I care about the refugees, too. You don't mind leaving the refugees to Blayce so long as you can drag Lady back. I don't want to drag Lady back—I want to help her save the refugees. I don't want to stop her from getting in trouble for committing treason. I want to help her do it."

"You're wrong, Tobe." Owen shook his head. "Maybe at first I just wanted to save Kel, but, as I was preparing to go after Kel, I started thinking, and I knew that I couldn't leave the refugees to their own devices, and not just because Blayce could make a lot of killing devices with them. I thought that if it were me in that position, I'd want people to come and rescue me."

"You don't know the refugees like I do," argued Tobe. "You don't know how Einur the cook can make something edible out of stuff most people wouldn't want to feed their pigs. You don't know how Mistress Valestone can soothe even the hottest tempers with her gentle tongue. You don't know how hard convicts like Gil worked around Haven to redeem themselves. You don't know about how cute Meech looked when he clutched onto his older sister's Gydo's skirts. You don't know how Gydo spent most of her day's looking after Meech, and how she looked forward to morning weapon practice. And you don't know how graceful Loey looked when she practiced or how pretty she looked when she laughed."

Owen detected a tenderness in Tobe's voice when he mentioned Loey, and he murmured, "You love her—Loey, I mean—don't you?"

"I don't rummage through your brain without permission," snapped Tobe.

"I take that as a yes." Owen grinned, even though he knew that Tobe wouldn't be able to see that in the dark. "Only people who are in love get so angry so easily."

"How did you become such an expert on love?" Tobe snorted, sounding remarkably like Peachblossom.

"I'm not an expert on love," Owen said. "I've just been through the same thing you have. I only realized that I loved a girl when I thought that she was trapped in a besieged city and might die there. I wrote to her to tell her that I loved her as soon as I learned that she managed to escape the siege, but I haven't heard back from her yet. Now, I don't know if I ever will, which is a shame. I would have liked to have been able to explain to her why I committed treason, but she might not want to have any contact with me once I'm a traitor. "

"Do you think she loves you?" asked Tobe after a moment's quiet.

"Yes—well, I hope she does, but I don't know that she does," Owen stuttered, wrong-footed at finally finding someone as blunt as he was.

"Well, if she does love you, she'll assume the best of you, and not the worst of you." It was Tobe's turn to play the wise man, now. "If she loves you, she'll assume that you had good reasons for doing what you did, and she'll give you a chance to explain them. If she loves you, she'll understand why you have to do all the crazy things you do, and she'll see that it's those pieces of insanity that make her love you. If she sees that, she'll want to support you. If she loves you, then she'll stand by you just like we're sticking by Lady."

For several long moments, Owen considered this, and then he said, "You might be onto something there, Tobe."

After that, silence fell between them again, but it wasn't a tense one anymore, and Owen thought that the two of them had become remarkably comfortable with each other in a short span of time. They had already established some level of mutual trust, and if they weren't yet friends, they were definitely comrades-at-arms. Now, they could work properly as a team, and it wouldn't take much, Owen thought, for the bond they had started to form to blossom fully in battle.

As the sun rose, staining the sky orange, crimson, and purple, and filling Owen with a sense of promise and the feeling that all the wrongs in the world could truly be made right, he reached into his rucksack and pulled out a map. While he did so, he looked over at Tobe and smiled, "It's light enough now that I can read a map. What do you say we stop for awhile and make a dent in the rations I packed?"

"I say it's a pretty good notion," Tobe agreed, and the two of them allowed their mounts and themselves to rest under the shade of a large spruce tree.

While he and Tobe ate dried fruit, Owen studied the map, checking to make sure that they were still headed north toward the Vassa river. Once he had satisfied himself that he was indeed taking the path that Kel was likely to, Owen folded up the map and returned it to his bag. As he replaced the map, he heard Tobe mutter, "It must be nice to be able to read maps like that."

"You can't read?" Owen gawked at Tobe. He knew that many of the common soldiers couldn't read, but he had assumed that Kel would teach Tobe how to read, and when he had heard how perfectly Tobe talked, he had assumed that the boy was at least partially literate. "I thought for sure that Kel would teach you how! Surely, that's in your contract—"

"It is," Tobe interrupted. "She wanted to teach me how, and the clerks at Haven would have been happy to do it, but I didn't really care to learn. I preferred learning how to fight to learning how to read. I always thought that books were rather boring."

"Some are," Owen responded honestly. "Others are wonderful and exciting, Tobe. Some are about stupid romances, but others are about great battles. Reading is fun as long as you find the right book. If you don't find the right book, you're better of watching a scab form than reading."

"Real life provides enough excitement for me." Tobe shrugged.

Again, quiet settled between them as they finished their breakfast. As they mounted their horses again, Owen, deciding that he wanted to learn more about the other lad, asked, "How'd you come to be indentured to Kel, anyway?"

"It's a long story," answered Tobe, his tone becoming stiff again.

"It's a long ride to Scanra," Owen pointed out. "I don't know about you, but I could use all the entertainment I can get."

"I was working at an inn that Kel stopped at during her ride up to the border. She was tending to her horses in the stable when she caught old Alvik the innkeeper beating me as usual, and she decided to intervene and buy my contract from him." Tobe's tone was flat, as though he were describing abuse experienced by someone else that he had no connection to whatsoever.

"How in the world did you end up indentured to that monster of an innkeeper?" Owen wanted to know, wondering if everyone he met had some hidden horror story.

"After I was born, I was left on the midwife Eulama's doorstep, and she took me in, because nobody knew who my parents were." Tobe's voice maintained its dispassionate inflection. "She was prone to drinking, and saying the oddest things when the liquor was in her, but she wasn't so bad."

Thinking of how his father behaved when he had been drinking too deeply from Jesslaw's wine stores, Owen remarked, "I know what's that's like. My father becomes a different person when he drinks, and then when the drink is out of him, he's back to normal only with a massive headache."

"That's like how it was with old Eulama." Tobe nodded sagely. "When old Eulama died, the local magistrate become responsible for my welfare, and, like all orphans who haven't got any aunts or uncles to take them in, I was made an indentured servant, so I could learn a trade. Alvik bought my contract from the magistrate, and I worked for him from then on until Lady came along."

"So you never really knew your mother or father at all. At least I knew my mother a bit before she was killed by bandits." Staring off into the distance, Owen shook his head.

"I don't care about not knowing anything about my father, because he must have abandoned her as soon as he found out that she was pregnant, leaving her no choice but to drop me off at a midwife's doorstep because she couldn't provide for me herself, and hoped that somebody else would do so. I don't blame her for that, I guess. I think she probably wanted to keep me, but she knew that she couldn't care for me properly. I think she wanted me to have a better life than she could give me, and she was willing to sacrifice the happiness she would have felt with me around her for what she hoped would be my future happiness, which is all the love I guess that anyone can ask for from a mother," Tobe said softly, staring off toward Scanra, as well. "I would have liked to have known her name, though, but since I don't, I've made one up for her."

"What is it?" Owen pressed, somewhat amazed at how hushed his voice was.

"Lucia," answered Tobe. "I think it sounds light and beautiful, but also easy to break."

"Lucia," Owen repeated, liking the way the syllables sounded on his tongue. "I could show you how to write it one day if you want."

"That would be nice." Tobe nodded. "That would be a good use for reading and writing."


	28. Chapter 28

Author's Note: This chapter borrows heavily from _Lady Knight_ once again, so I apologize in advance for that, but it really can't be helped and, wherever possible, I've tried to add my own spin on events. (I also took the liberty of changing the name Faleron to Esmond during one piece of dialogue, because it didn't make sense for Faleron to suddenly teleport into their group. I hope you can forgive me that license.)

Rough Starts

Not long afterwards, as Owen and Tobe rode around a bend, they could spot the signs of a camp being packed up. It was too far away to see if the people were Scanran or Tortallan, and it didn't really matter what nationality they were, given that he and Tobe were now both traitors to Tortall and so could no longer regard Tortallans as allies. Hoping that he and Tobe wouldn't have to fight because the group up ahead seemed to outnumber them by a considerable margin, Owen nudged Happy toward the shadows of the road, where they might be able to hide until the group ahead had moved on.

However, his hopes of going undetected by the knot of people ahead were shattered when whinnies from the group's horses reached him and Tobe, suggesting that the horses before them had noticed them and that soon their owners would.

"This is not jolly," grumbled Owen, his hand flying to the hilt of his sword. His jaw tightened when Happy and Peachblossom answered with resounding neighs of their own, and he added, "Happy, now would be a good time for you to shut up."

He thought that while he would never have the stupidity it required to say that to Peachblossom, the sentiment certainly applied to Kel's obstinate gelding, as well.

"Don't worry," Tobe reassured him. "Those be friendly horses up ahead."

Before Owen could ask him how in all the name of all that was holy he knew that, a cavalcade of dogs, including Jump, and cats raced toward them, and Owen knew that they had stumbled upon Kel's camp.

"I wonder who is with Kel," he commented, as they neared the camp with an escort of yapping dogs and meowing cats. "Neal, Merric, Seaver, and Esmond can't have gotten here before us. Their horses were still in the stable when we left."

"I don't care who they are, so long as they ain't about to kill me or clap me in irons." Tobe shrugged.

As he spoke, they arrived at the mostly packed up camp, and Owen saw that the people with Kel were men he had known briefly at Giantkiller when they were rushing to build permanent shelters before winter set in with all of its icy savagery. Unless he had confused names and faces, which was always a possibility taking into account how many soldiers he had met over the course of this war, Kel was being accompanied by a squad under the command of Domitian of Masbolle, who was, as far as Owen remembered, Neal's cousin and preferred to be called Dom.

Before Owen could greet Dom or any of the others, Kel brought Hoshi up alongside him as they left the now packed camp behind them. "Are you insane?" she demanded, her arms crossed over her chest and her Yamani stone mask almost slipping.

"I'm no crazier than you or anyone else here," he replied, noting that after being Wyldon's squire it was hard to fear anyone's wrath, even Kel's.

"Do you know what you're doing?" she went on, looking if anything more angered by his response.

"I'm helping you," Owen answered resolutely.

"You're committing treason," Kel snapped, her temper finally getting the better of her. "You're betraying your knightmaster. You won't be able to return to Tortall after this, and if you do return, you'll be going straight to Traitor's Hill for beheading if you're lucky and drawing and quartering if you aren't—"

"You don't need to tell me stuff I already know." Owen brought his lips together in a firm line. He had made his decision, and he couldn't reconsider now, for fear he would choose the coward's course. "It's not going to make any difference, and it's just going to make us both more miserable."

"Owen, go back to Lord Wyldon," she urged.

"I'll go back when you do." He certainly wasn't going back before then with his tail between his legs. It was better to be a traitor than to be a coward, as far as he was concerned. At least a traitor stood for something; a coward stood for nothing.

"It's too late for me to go back, but it's not too late for you," she pressed. "Go back to him and apologize. He'll understand enough that the punishment won't be death."

"I'm not going back." Owen shook his head. "I need to help you rescue your people."

"They aren't your people." He could tell that Kel was struggling to find arguments now. "You don't owe them anything."

"They're Tortallans, aren't they?" he asked simply, spreading his hands. "That makes them my people, doesn't it?"

"Owen, the people we just deserted are Tortallans, too," Kel pointed out. "You have no problem turning your back on them."

"They have people to protect them," countered Owen. "Your refugees don't. That's why we've got to save them, Kel. That's what being a knight is all about—defending those who can't defend themselves and protecting those who have nobody to protect them."

"If you keep going down this road, you'll never get to become a knight." Kel sounded more sad than angry now.

"I know," Owen agreed quietly, staring down at Happy's mane. Being a knight who could rid the country of bandits had been his dream ever since his mother had been slaughtered by them, and it killed such a large part of him to know that he was dashing that dream into dust with every step he had Happy take down the road to Scanra. Still, he felt like he was meant to go on this mission with Kel, and he couldn't deny his destiny. In life, he figured, it was fine to spend time doing what you wanted until you discovered what you were meant to do. Once you uncovered what you were meant to do, you would be a true coward to flee from it. "I can still act like one, though. The world would be a better place if everyone acted like a knight."

At this, if anything, Kel's features looked even sadder, and, desperate to ease her pain, he continued earnestly, "Don't be upset. I had to come. We owe these people our protection." Feeling suddenly that Kel had to understand why Wyldon had turned his back on the refugees, he went on, remembering overhead conversations from Wyldon's study, "My lord was just stuck. General Vanget sent word that the enemy will cross the Vassa into our district in five nights, when the moon is full—"

"Owen, you shouldn't tell me this," Kel hissed, appalled. "I doubt Vanget wants others to know."

"But you _have_ to," he insisted, thinking that at the rate he was betraying his country and Lord Wyldon, one more offense hardly mattered. After you had committed murder, you couldn't get too upset over punching someone in the face, after all. "I know you didn't understand why my lord turned his back on all those civilians. Well, that's why. King Maggot wants to cross with a thousand men two miles downriver from Mastiff. My lord and Lord Raoul and General Vanget are smuggling companies and mages into Mastiff before the enemy comes. Kel, it must have killed him to refuse to save your people. That's why I had to tell you." Settling back in his saddle and reflecting on how well Lord Wyldon could read people, he added, "I think he knew I was going. He didn't say anything, but…"

Silence fell between them after that until Kel's sparrows swirled around her, indicating that men were approaching them, and the birds could not determine if they were friend or foe.

"Maybe a patrol from the new fort," Kel whispered to Dom, who was riding on her other side. "What do you want to do?"

As Owen wondered why she was asking for directions when she was the one in charge, Dom arched his eyebrows so that his relationship to Neal became glaringly apparent. "Your party, Kel. Your orders."

In response, Kel gestured for everyone to hide in the woods. Obediently, Owen led Happy behind a large tree, making sure to wipe away Happy's hoof prints afterwards. Then, he dismounted and held his breath as the sound of horses riding toward them grew steadily louder in his ears.

Glancing out from behind the tree, Owen saw that it was indeed a patrol—a squad of soldiers led by Quinden of Marti's Hill. They should have had scouts in the forest, but it was lucky for Owen and the rest of Kel's ragtag army that they didn't. Never had he imagined that he would be praising Mithros for the idiocy of one of Joren's followers, but that day had come at long last.

Owen was still thanking Mithros for Quinden's negligence when the patrol thundered on, and he and the others emerged from concealment again.

They rode on without interruption until the sun had climbed halfway up the morning sky, and the sparrows flitted back to Kel, heralding the arrival of more recruits to her army. However, Kel didn't appear glad to see them.

"Go back," she snarled, as Neal, Merric, Seaver, Esmond, and seventeen or so soldiers that Owen didn't recognize joined them. "Have you lost your minds completely? You're needed at Mastiff!"

"We're needed here more," Seaver retorted, and Owen applauded him inwardly. Seaver might have been reserved, but he could express himself well enough when he wanted to. "You'll have a fight on your hands when you reach your people."

"I have warriors, and my people can defend themselves, given weapons. You have an oath to the Crown," Kel exploded, her patience finally used up, it seemed. "This is treason, you sapskulls. You can't just decide when you're in service to the realm and when you're not!"

"Like you have?" Neal asked in the innocent tone he employed whenever he was making his most vexing comments, although, this time, Owen reckoned that he had a point.

"This is different," Kel snapped at him.

"Of course it is," Esmond agreed levelly, leaning on his saddle horn. "That's why we're here."

Obviously searching for another argument she could use, Kel glanced around until her eyes lit on Merric, who was ashen-faced and swaying on the horse he had been tied to. "He should be in bed," she shouted. "You had to tie him to his horse to get him this far!"

"But I'm really well tied." Merric smiled as though this made the tying both reasonable and comfortable.

Seeing the despairing frustration welling in Kel's eyes, Owen, thinking that Kel should be comforted not dismayed by the appearance of so many people to help her rescue her people, interrupted, "Why are you upset? It's going to be a jolly scramble now."

Kel appeared as if she was going to argue with him, but she seemed to think better of it, and Dom took advantage of the opportunity to ease the tension by saying, "Sir Meathead, you took long enough to get here. Sergeant Connac, good to see you."

"Sergeant Domitian."One of the new arrivals with a sergeant's badge bowed and grinned. "Good to see you again, sir."

At this, Kel seemed to decide that they were all mad, for she spurred Hoshi on ahead. Watching her ride off and following after her along with the others, Owen assured them all, "She'll be all right. She just needs to get used to things."

Once she realized that they were following her by choice and that she wasn't forcing any of them to ruin their lives, she would feel better and would be glad to have so many people help her rescue her people. Until then, Owen would try not to think about all he had left behind in Tortall, especially Margarry. He wished he had been able to leave a letter to her, but there hadn't been time, and he hadn't dared to mention her in his note to Wyldon. Of course, he told himself, it was probably good that he hadn't involved Margarry in this. She didn't need to be tainted by association with a traitor, after all, and he just hoped that when this was all over, she would find some other man to love her as she deserved to be.


	29. Chapter 29

Author's Note: Again, this chapter borrows a good deal from _Lady Knight_, but, as before, I did the best I could to keep Owen's story distinct from Kel's.

Ford Every River

They rode steadily through the morning, and, in the early afternoon, they found themselves approaching the banks of the Vassa. As he gazed at the Vassa and the marks the boats the Scanrans had used to cross the river had left on the muddy and rocky shoreline, Owen realized that he hadn't exactly thought about how they would ford the river. When he had runaway, his mentality had largely been that they would hop every hurdle as they came to it. Of course, it wasn't like he could have taken a small boat in his pocket from Mastiff, so it wasn't like things would have been much different if he had considered that issue…

"Mithros." Beside him, Tobe whistled. "I don't think I've ever seen so much water in one place before."

"I have," Owen said, thinking of the placidly flowing Olorun near Corus, which was the opposite of the seething and roaring Vassa that, even in midsummer, still had chunks of ice bouncing along on top its current. "I've never seen water this wild, though."

Sure, he had heard that the Vassa was far more turbulent than the Olorun, and he had heard that the tumultuous waves in the ocean made the Vassa look like a gently babbling brook, but hearing about something was different than seeing it in person. Words never could do justice to the cold, uncontrollable majesty of nature. Just standing beside the Vassa made him understand how it felt to be an ant about to be crushed.

"How are we goin' to get across?" asked Tobe, eyeing the Vassa cautiously.

"We could build a raft," Owen suggested, after looking around and realizing that the closest boats were conveniently located on the other side of the raging river. "There's plenty of wood around."

"I don't have no rope on me to tie the wood together." Tobe shook his head. "Do you?"

"No," admitted Owen. He was silent for a moment, and then added excitedly, "I read about a pirate who once tied together wood with chest hair to make a raft to escape an island he had been marooned on."

"I don't think you'll be finding anyone 'round here who wants to have their chest hair yanked out," snorted Tobe. "You read too much. It's made you crazy."

"Reading doesn't make you crazy," argued Owen.

"How do you explain Sir Nealan, then?" Tobe arched his eyebrows.

"Neal's always been crazy." Owen smiled. "That's different. Reading didn't make him mad."

Tobe opened his mouth to contest this when suddenly Neal's raised voice reached them, "When a situation arises, rather than bungle it yourselves, call in an expert. Follow me." Even though he had made it sound like a command, he, along with everyone else, remained in place, waiting for Kel's opinion on the matter.

"Will your solution get us across sometime before next week?" Kel inquired after a minute's thought.

"Considerably," Neal told her, sounding serious rather than mocking, which was quite a feat for his acerbic self. "It's not entirely legal, but I won't tell if you won't."

For a second, Owen wondered exactly which law Neal was suggesting that they breach. Then, he rolled his eyes at his own foolishness. Whatever it was, it could be no worse than committing treason. He had already dug his own grave. Making it a little deeper wouldn't make any real difference.

Kel seemed to have arrived at a similar conclusion, because, after a brief pause, she nodded, and said, "Let's go, then."

They followed Neal down a track that clung to the high ground above the Vassa until they reached the edge of a forested bluff. From there, they rode down a path that looked like a game trail until you noticed the hoofprints dotting the edges. They followed this track for another three miles, and Owen knew that they had now technically crossed the Scanran border, although, thank Mithros, all the farmhouses and woodsman's shacks they encountered were empty, because nobody with basic common sense or survival skills wanted to find out if they could live in the borderland between two warring countries.

Finally, the trail descended into a broad clearing at the far edge of which stood a cluster of longhouses inside a log palisade. The longhouses seemed to be occupied, if the smoke rising from the chimneys and the noises of goats, chickens, and geese were any indicators.

"Wait here," Neal ordered everyone except Kel. Waving his hand at the trees surrounding the clearing, he added, "String out along the trees, so they can see how many we are. Kel, you're with me."

Obediently, Owen fell back to stand beside a gigantic oak, and, in the process, he found himself next to Lofren, one of the men from Dom's squad.

"What do you reckon the odds are that this is a smuggler's den?" Lofren muttered as Neal, Kel, Peachblossom, the sparrows, Jump, several cats, and Tobe, who seemed to have insisted on accompanying Kel, disappeared into the palisade.

"Very high," answered Owen, telling himself that smuggling was no worse than treason, so he shouldn't be getting snotty about which law-breakers he associated with.

"My father would kill me," sighed Lofren, whose father was a magistrate if Owen remembered correctly from his brief interaction with Dom's squad back at Giantkiller. "Smuggling is illegal. Of course, so is helping you lot commit treason. That's abetting in a capital offense, which is punishable with hanging or disembowelment, which you probably know is—"

"I do know what it is," Owen cut in quickly. "I don't need to hear the gory details, thanks."

"Sorry." Lofren's cheeks flushed. "I just get nervous when I have to wait around like this. When I get nervous, I start babbling on about things that I know well, and I happen to know a lot about the law, having been raised by a magistrate."

"Don't worry about it," Owen assured him. "I don't like waiting much, either. I much prefer being in action. Doing something is always better than standing around doing nothing but thinking about everything that could go wrong."

"Well, I'm sure that things will be happening soon, and not long after that, things will start going awry, unless, of course, they begin getting messed up before then," commented Lofren, all dourness.

"Do you think that you could try doing jolly and upbeat sometime, Lofren?" Owen wanted to know, wondering why he always found himself attached to the most depressing person in situations like this.

Before Lofren could reply, Neal appeared at the entrance of the palisade and gestured for them to come in. "Joys abound," observed Lofren dryly, raising his fists in a faux cheer. "We've been invited to join the party at last. I can't wait to join the fun."

"I see that you've decided to be the spoilsport already," Owen replied, grinning as he led Happy into the smuggler's den. "That's great. After all, every party needs one."

After they entered the palisade, they had no choice but to wait within one of the longhouses for the sun set and the moon to rise, so that they could cross the Vassa. Owen kept himself from going insane during the period of forced rest by sharpening and polishing his weapons. When he finished doing that, he ate the dish that the Scanrans distributed, which Owen thought was rather tasty, although that might not have been saying much, since he was accustomed to army food.

After he had eaten, he had nothing better to do than sit down by the fire in the longhouse and pet one of the hound dogs accompanying Kel that had curled up beside the fireplace for warmth. As he stroked it, he was surprised by how perfect the jaw and snout were.

"You're handsome, aren't you?" Owen asked the dog companionably, as he ran his fingers through its fur. "You know, I think you might be a purebred. My lord would like to have I look at you. If we can't find the family you used to belong to, I'll bring you back to him. He likes dogs and horses more than he likes most people."

"That be Shepherd that ye're talkin' to," one of the soldiers from Haven informed him, sitting down on the other side of the hound dog.

"Shepherd?" repeated Owen, puzzled. "What kind of name is that for a hound dog? Hound dogs are for hunting, not for tending to sheep!"

"I didn't name him." The soldier shrugged. "He reminds me of me old sheepdog because of his name, though."

"Were you a shepherd before you joined the army, then?" Owen wanted to know. He would never cease to be amazed by all the different careers that everyone had been engaged in before they had joined the army for whatever reason.

"In a manner of speakin'." The man shrugged again. "I was a shepherd until there was a great draught for a few years in the Tirragen area. When the rains didn't come, the grass couldn't grow, and the sheep all starved. Once the sheep died, my family was startin' to go hungry—"

"So you joined the army to get money to feed them?" Owen guessed, thinking that he saw the ending to this sad story now.

"No, I joined up with a gang of bandits," responded the man, and Owen stared at him, as he concluded that the man must have been one of the convict soldiers from Haven. Disgust flared in him as he recognized that he had been having a regular conversation with a former bandit—a former thief and murderer. Kel should never have had the mage marks that identified the convicts removed, he thought bitterly. People who had engaged in banditry were the scum of the earth as far as he was concerned, and, at the very least, they deserved to be ostracized wherever they went. In fact, they deserved to suffer a slow and painful death for their atrocious actions. Indeed, as far as he was concerned, drawing and quartering would be too good for bandits, but it would suffice until someone devised a more unpleasant method of executing people. "That worked for a few years until a group of pages led by Lady defeated us, and got us arrested. I woulda died in a labor camp probably if this war hadn't started, and I could get a reduced sentence for joinin' up."

"You don't deserve a reduced sentence," Owen snapped. "You don't even deserve hard labor. You deserve a slow, painful death like you gave to so many people you robbed."

"I had to feed me family," retorted the man. "Should I have just sat back and let 'em starve?"

"You should have found another way to feed them," Owen volleyed back. "You should have joined the army then or something!"

"If ye have such a problem with me breakin' the law then, why are you committin' treason now?" the man demanded.

"I don't have a problem breaking the law when it's justified," Owen countered shortly. "It's needed now, but you didn't have to do it to feed your family before when you could have joined the army or something! You were being selfish. You weren't thinking about the innocent people that you were stealing from or killing! You were trampling over any weak people that you could find. That's the opposite of what we're doing now. Now we're trying to rescue the innocent and the weak. It's okay to break the law when you are being selfless, but it's not acceptable when you're doing it out of selfishness."

"Ye see how noble ye'll feel when ye can see the ribs stickin' out in the stomachs of yer children," the man growled. "Morality is a privilege only the rich can afford."

"You see how forgiving you'll be of bandits when they killed your mother!" Owen snapped back.

"I didn't kill yer mother," the man pointed out heatedly. "Don't blame me for what someone else did!"

"And I didn't make your children go hungry," snarled Owen. "Somehow I think you'd have stolen from me anyway."

"I did what I had to do, and I won't apologize for doin' that." The man folded his arms over his chest. "Maybe I was selfish as ye say, but I was desperate, because I was seein' the people I loved most in the world starve to death like me poor sheep. That might have made me go crazy and do some things to others that I shouldn't have done, but do ye believe in redemption?"

"I guess that if we couldn't change for the better and atone for the bad things that we did, then there would be no hope for any of us," Owen confessed after a long moment, biting his lip, because he sensed that admitting this might cause him to lose this debate with this former bandit.

"Well, maybe servin' the Lady Knight here is me way of findin' redemption."

Owen didn't know how to respond to that, and an awkward silence fell between him and the convict until it was time to depart, and they all gathered at the door of the longhouse, where the elderly woman who lived with the smugglers wanted them to drink a potion that Neal said would make it impossible for them to tell anyone who interrogated them how they had come to ford the Vassa.

Once Neal had verified that the concoction was safe to drink, he sipped it and passed it around to the others. When it reached Merric, he grumbled, "Why didn't I start training with yearmates who were sane?"

"You're not looking at this the right way," Owen chided, thinking that Merric should have been grateful to have the action and the glory of war without the burdens of counting supplies or burying the dead where they wouldn't contaminate the wells. In short, it was all the excitement of war without the boring elements. "Here we are on an adventure. It's glory, and fame, and all those people the Scanrans took. It's not counting troops or finding ways to bury the dead so they won't rot into the drinking water. And if we die in battle, Mithros will speak for us in the Black God's court. You ought to be more grateful."

As he finished, he took a sip from the container that had been offered to him. The instant that the revolting, overpowering mixture of rosemary, lavender, peppermint, and other herbs that Owen couldn't identify and didn't really desire to made contact with his tongue, he nearly spat it out. No longer feeling especially grateful, he forced himself to swallow the potion, and then bullied his stomach into not vomiting it up again. That potion wasn't something he wished to taste a second time, after all.

His urge to throw up only grew when he finally managed to convince the balking Happy to get onto the smugglers' boat and they had started to cross the turbulent Vassa. When they arrived on the other side of the river at last, Happy showed that he had hated the journey even more than Owen had by leaping off the boat as soon as they neared the other bank, almost tugging Owen into the Vassa in the progress.

"You could try to remember that I can't jump as far as you," Owen panted once he had recovered from almost being yanked into the river by his mount, stroking Happy's nose to quiet him. "You obviously aren't a sea horse."

Happy snorted as Neal, disembarking the boat, told the stallion, "I'm with you. I felt safer on the ocean in the middle of a storm."

At that, Owen felt grateful that he had never been on an ocean in the midst of a storm. Crossing the Vassa had been enough of an ordeal, as far as he was concerned, and he wasn't looking forward to making the return trip to Tortall. He would worry about that later, though. It was far enough in the future that there was no point fretting over it. He didn't want to become as much of a misery guts as everyone else on this adventure, after all.


	30. Chapter 30

Author's Note: Again, in a shocking surprise, much of the plot of this chapter is borrowed from _Lady Knight_, but, as before, I tried to alter Owen's perceptions on events to a degree, so that this part becomes more of his story than Kel's.

Behind Enemy Lines

Once they had forded the Vassa, they followed the refugees' trail across the Vassa road to the foot of the bluffs that had come into view as they crossed the river. As they reached the base of the bluffs, a grisly sight greeted them.

At first, by the pale light of the three-quarters moon, Owen couldn't determine what was hanging from the trees up ahead. A moment later, once it became clear to him that they were people, swinging slightly in the breeze and causing the branches they were strewn over to creak like arthritic knees in protest, he felt his stomach transform itself into a stone, and his mouth go dry.

Numbly, he drew Happy to a halt alongside the others. Although every part of his brain was screaming at him not to look, he found himself staring, horrorstruck, at the five bloated corpses—four male and one female, as far as he could discern. He had seen plenty of dead bodies before, because the generous Scanrans attacks assured that you didn't even have to travel far from your fort to witness that marvel firsthand, so this sight shouldn't have impacted him so much.

After all, he had smelt enough bodies rotting on a sweltering summer day to appreciate the fact that the Scanran night lowered the temperature enough that the odor of decaying flesh wasn't overpowering. He had also seen enough corpses swarming with flies and crawling with maggots to appreciate how few scavengers were devouring these particular bodies.

No, it wasn't so much the corpses themselves that sickened him, he thought as he helped Dom's squad cut loose the woman, whom Owen judged would have been attractive in a plump sort of way. It was the words etched roughly onto the plank that had been stuck up beside them: "Rebellious Slaves."

These people had possessed the courage to fight back against their oppressors. When the world had whacked them across the face, they hadn't meekly accepted it—they had battled it. Unlike so many beings, they had the nerve to defend themselves, he observed inwardly as he helped pile leaves over the corpses that they didn't even have time to bury properly. They had bravery, and look where it had gotten them—an ignominious death with an incomplete burial.

As Kel choked up when attempting to lead them in prayers, and Neal eventually took over, Owen found himself mumbling the traditional blessings for the dead through heavy lips. Over and over, he told himself that it didn't matter what kind of burial an individual received, since once a person died, the body and the soul were forever severed with the body doomed to decay here, and the soul destined to travel onto the Black God's kingdom for judgment. A person's soul couldn't be hurt by an improper burial. Burials mattered to the living, surely, but not to the dead. Nothing earthly could wound the dead—not even the maggots that devoured the flesh.

That's what he told himself repeatedly, but he couldn't make himself believe it. When they finally mounted their horses and rode off into the night again, he tried to shove the images of the corpses from his head. However, the dead bodies that he had just inadequately buried stubbornly refused to be dislodged from his skull.

For some reason, his heart was shouting at him that those corpses were him, and he was them. As a result, when Kel ordered them to stop and camp for the remainder of the night along the foot of the bluffs where the trees by a rising rock afforded their horses and them plenty of cover, pictures of the hanged people were still dominating his mind as he collapsed onto his unfurled sleeping roll and curled up beneath his blankets.

Everything, even the summer nights, are cold here in Scanra, he complained to himself, attempting to forget the glassy, forever blank and unseeing gaze of the corpses they had come across. It was no use, though. He still found himself wondering if they had suffered too awfully at the end, their feet desperately dancing in a final jig as they struggled to get air into their throats, which were constricted by thick rope that scratched their necks. He still found himself praying that their lives hadn't ended like that. He still found himself hoping that their necks had snapped under the pressure of being hanged, so that they wouldn't have been strangled, but would have perished quickly and relatively painlessly. He still found himself shuddering as he imagined what it would be like to know for certain that you were going to be killed and that there was nothing you could do to prevent it.

That was something he had never truly paused to consider before. He had contemplated dying in battle, but that wasn't the same as being executed. You went into battle knowing you could die; you went into an execution knowing you were going to perish and that nothing you could do could change that fact. You went into battle fighting death and dishing it out to enemies; you went into an execution as defenseless as a lamb being led to the slaughter. Perhaps even after all the dreadful anticipation leading up to it, death itself when it finally came seemed a mercy.

Suddenly, as he lay there in the dark, gazing up at the indifferent heavens and listening to the night sounds all around him, Owen realized that he might discover for himself very soon what it felt like to be executed. The sight of the hanged refugees drove home to him as nothing previously had that treason was a capital offense. Worse still—as though anything could be—it was a crime that typically warrented a far harsher sentence than a mere hanging. Usually, it involved drawing and quartering, although for members of the nobility that penalty was traditionally commuted to beheading.

He could hardly endure contemplating resting his head against a wooden block and waiting for a hopefully sharp ax to swoosh through the air and cleave his head from his shoulders. His mind cowered from the notion of his four limbs being tied to four different horses. His innards twisted as he envisioned the unbearable strain on his body that would last maybe a few seconds, and then the agonizing end as his body was torn asunder. Everyone always complimented him for his bravery, but Owen didn't think he had much courage, because even picturing these scenarios made his blood turn to ice.

As such, he doubted very much that he would be very brave if the moment ever came when he was faced with either of those methods of execution. Indeed, he reckoned that he would be lucky if he didn't make a blubbering plea for clemency at his trial, and if he didn't dissolve into a hysterical fit when the moment of his execution arrived.

Under other circumstances, he would have been embarrassed by even entertaining the prospect of breaking down in public like that—he could picture Lord Wyldon's disapproving glower at the sort of theatrics he despised—but at the present, he wasn't. Sure, he knew that if he burst out crying when his sentence was passed or carried out, he would disgrace himself, but what did honor amount to when you were dying?

Everything, he snapped at himself a second after the question bubbled to the surface of his brain. Honor is everything, and you should be ashamed of yourself for forgetting that. Think of the hanged people you just saw. You saw defiance and no regret or anything on their faces. They knew that they had done the right thing, and they weren't afraid to die for their conscience. They had courage until the very end, and so must you. Bravery means nothing if it flees when you need it most.

True courage was having the guts to thank your executioners for lighting a fire in your honor when they were about to burn you at the stake. Bravery was being able to make it look like you were leading a parade when they were running you out of town. Courage was behaving as though victory was assured even when you knew that defeat was inevitable. People could take your life from you without your consent, but they couldn't deprive you of your courage unless you allowed them to do that.

There is glory to be had even in fighting for a lost cause, he told himself, listening to the snores and sleep mumbling of the slumbering beings all around him. Yet, even when he arrived at this conclusion, he couldn't drift off to dreamland.

Somehow, now that he had truly confronted and largely come to terms with the prospect of his execution, Owen discovered that he appreciated every splendid moment of existence all the more. Every breath was sacred, and every heartbeat was a miracle. Life was now too precious to squander on sleeping. Every rustle of the wind had to be heard. Every blade of grass had to be touched. Every star had to be studied.

The past was gone and could never be regained; the future was as intangible as the clouds that slunk across the sky on a spring day. For everyone, eternity was in the great present—the glorious now was the background on which the drama of every life unfolded. Those who recognized this immutable truth, Owen understood abruptly, felt fulfilled when they died even if they died young because they didn't waste their time, whereas those who didn't were doomed to be miserable even if they managed to outlive Duke Gareth of Naxen.

After that, Owen just stared around him, committing every blade of grass, every star, and every branch to memory. He felt like he was getting drunk off life itself, and, all too soon, the darkness began to lighten, as auroras of yellow, orange, purple, blue, and red illuminated the sky.

Whistling a soft tune to himself, because he figured that, now that dawn had arrived, the others should be arising, so that they didn't waste a moment that they should be spending on their adventure, Owen wrapped up his sleeping roll and blank. Then, he reached into his bag and pulled out a breakfast of cheese and cold sausage.

As he bit into the cold sausage and watched as the camp surged to life all around him with everyone eating and packing up their belongings, Owen wished that he could have lit a fire to warm up the meat. Sadly, however, he wasn't silly enough even his good humor to risk a fire in enemy territory.

"Ye have bags under yer eyes," commented the convict Owen had argued with at the smugglers' den yesterday, as he settled himself on a stone beside Owen.

"I didn't sleep last night," Owen said through a bite of cheese. He had been planning to have his tastebuds appreciate the sharp flavor of the cheese as they never had before last night's epiphany, but his resolution faded when the convict started skinning a rabbit. Right now probably wasn't the best moment to begin expanding his sensory awareness, after all. Last night was still affecting him, though. Before his grand revelation, he would have sounded ashamed or annoyed when he said this, but now he sounded cheerful. There was nothing wrong with staying awake to absorb the beauty of the world.

"Couldn't get the hanged people out of yer mind, eh?" the convict asked.

The Owen of yesterday would have told the convict where he could file his prying questions, but this Owen realized that life was too short on petty squabbles.

"I thought about them, yes," he answered.

"Hanging ain't a fun way to go," observed the convict.

"No, it isn't," Owen agreed. "Of course, by committing treason like this, we all are all but signing up for a more gruesome end."

The convict glossed over the reference to his probable drawing and quartering, and instead replied dryly, "I bet ye wish that all bandits would be hanged, don't ye?"

"No," Owen responded, astonishing even himself, because yesterday he would have answered in the affirmative, but that was before he had encountered the bloated corpses. "I hate bandits. I think the best thing they could do for humanity is commit suicide or all kill each other off, and if I somehow manage to become a knight after all this, I intend to devote a lot of my time to bringing them down. I don't think they should all be executed, though. Execution is a slow torture, and even bandits don't deserve that—only King Maggot does. Bandits should be allowed to fight for their lives like everyone else. They should be killed in battle."

"Ye have the oddest ideas, Squire." The convict shook his head.

"I've been told that frequently. It doesn't bother me." Owen shrugged as several dogs and cats clustered around them, begging for food. "You might as well call me Owen. Squire will just remind me of everything I left behind when I went on this quest."

"Ye can call me Nat, then," the convict informed him. As he established as much, Nat fed strips of rabbit to the dogs and cats, muttering, "I feed those who come beggin' to me no matter how little food I've got. If everyone was equally charitable, maybe I would never have needed to resort to banditry."

"Mithros keeps a record of who feeds the poor and who fails to, Nat," Owen reminded him, feeding Shepherd some of his sausage. "He gives it to the Black God when the moment of our judgment comes. Those who could have given alms but refused to do so go hungry in the afterlife, and those who went hungry during life eat their fill in the afterlife."

"Perhaps," Nat remarked, "but that doesn't do the starvin' much good while they be in this life, does it?"

"It might give them hope," Owen countered, standing up and beginning to saddle Happy, as around him the rest of Kel's army started making preparations to depart. "That's no small thing."

"It feels like it is when that's all yer livin' on," chuckled Nat flatly, as they rode out of camp.

Despite his conversation with Nat, which should have lowered his spirits, Owen still felt merry as they continued to ride through the woods with the sparrows flying around them as scouts. His mood was only further bolstered when Kel asked him to serve as scout on her right hand side.

Feeling as though he were attuned to every speck of dirt, every leaf, and every piece of tree bark, Owen rode through the forest as stealthily as he could in front of Kel and the others. His eyes and ears, awakened after last night's revelation, were more alert to sights and sounds than they had ever been before. Consequently, he was able to see and hear the approaching Scanrans before he otherwise would have, and his eyes registered their shields, weapons, and the fact that they were fighting men swiftly.

As he dashed back to Kel to make his report, he thought excitedly that he would be locked in a real battle soon, and that, since the men were probably headed to Mastiff, by being part of the group that killed them, he would be fulfilling at least a fraction of his duty to Lord Wyldon, after all.

His ears flooded with the pounding of his racing blood as he obeyed Kel and crouched by the side of the road with Neal, Merric, and Tobe. Pre-battle adrenaline surged in his veins, as he waited impatiently for the Scanrans to approach. Then, Kel's group could jump on them, and, after that, he and his companions could do their bit in thrashing the Scarnrans.

Finally, after what felt like hours, the Scanrans were upon them, and the next second Seaver's archers in the woods dropped their arrows like hailstones upon the Scanrans, as Kel's group lurched at them, weapons drawn. Owen barely had time to register all this before he, too, had joined the fray, his sword assaulting opponents and parrying their blows.

Neal and Merric were working alongside him, and they slowly but steadily boxed in their adversaries. The three of them kept close together, attacking as one and defending each other when necessary.

Owen lost himself to the battle, and, in his world, there was only the smell of sweat and blood, the blur of his steel sword, and the balance of it in his hand. He felt as if he could see everything he needed to at once—the position of each of his allies and his enemies, and, from that, he could guess what moves they would make next. His focus was complete, as he sliced through the stomach of one Scanran, pivoted, and buried his sword in another's heart.

Next to him, Merric chopped off the head of one Scanran, and then turned to cut off the legs of another. His moves were by no means jerky, but they seemed calculated and lacked the grace of Neal's, a distant part of Owen's brain noted.

Neal's body was moving like molten metal, as he smoothly slid from one attack position to another, each movement flowing seamlessly into the next without any definable beginning or conclusion. More than that, he seemed to be everywhere at once, his sword in constant motion as he took out one Scanran after another. He always appeared to land exactly where he had planned, ready to launch another attack or defend an ally. Still more impressively, as far as Owen was concerned, his face never registered effort—only concentration. Even Lord Wyldon would be impressed if he could see Neal now, Owen thought, and Lord Wyldon hated Neal. Neal had certainly learned well from the Lioness and her sharp tongue.

Far too soon for Owen's liking, the battle ended, and, as soon as it was over, he felt a throbbing pain in his right cheekbone. "Mithros," he gasped, rubbing his hand over his cheek and staring as it came away covered in blood. "I didn't even notice that I got hurt."

"Your body was prioritizing. It knew that you couldn't afford to be distracted by a cut while you were fighting," explained Neal somewhat breathlessly, and Owen was somewhat relieved to discover that all that swordwork was at least a little draining for Neal. "Once you weren't engaged in battle any more, you could afford to be distracted by your own body. Your body is making you feel pain so you get a healing."

As he established as much, he extended an emerald-glowing hand toward Owen's cheek.

"I want a scar to impress the girls." Owen stepped back, not mentioning that he wanted it to impress a particular girl—Margarry. He'd heard it said that girls were attracted to men like their fathers, and Owen needed to accumulate a lot of scars if he wanted to catch up to Lord Wyldon. "They like a man who looks dangerous, and my face needs all the help it can get."

"At least let me clean it," Neal growled, looking every bit as fearsome as his former knightmistress, "unless you think you'll look really dangerous with your face rotting off."

"I don't want to smell like I use a Stormwing for cologne," Owen conceded, permitting Neal to clean his injury. As Neal's healing magic leapt across his cheek like flames in a fireplace, he added, "You got a lot better at swordsmanship since I saw you last."

"You spend four years under the Lioness' tutelage, and you'll learn how to wield a sword, too," answered Neal dourly, grimacing at the memory of his squireship to the King's Champion.

"You've no business complaining until you've done jousting practice with my lord Wyldon," Owen replied, happy for the distraction from the healing. Hatred of being healed was something he shared with his knightmaster. "You do that, and see how jolly you feel afterward."

"I'll pass," snorted Neal, as he finished cleaning Owen's cut and went off to heal a gash on Nat's forearm. "I don't feel the need to try to heal my own broken back afterward."


	31. Chapter 31

Author's Note: As many of you probably could predict, this chapter again borrows heavily from_ Lady Knight_, but, once again, I have tried my best to alter the story enough that it becomes Owen's rather than Kel's.

Freedom

As far as Owen was concerned, waiting until he was up to his armpits in enemies was infinitely worse than being up to his armpits in them. Being up to his armpits in adversaries meant a glorious, adrenaline-spurred battle, but waiting meant sitting around feeling like a fifth wheel on a wagon, passively watching with a drumming heart as the steps that allowed battle to be joined unfolded without his involvement. Mithros, he hated waiting almost as much as he loathed King Maggot and his evil mage. Unfortunately, war was all about waiting, Owen had learned, or at least when it wasn't about staring death in the face and never blinking.

Of the two states, staring death in the face was preferable, in his opinion. In fact, he wished that he was doing that now, instead of hiding in the forest, while Jump and the other pets snuck into the slave camp, delivering weapons and lock picks to the refugees. Finally, the dogs and cats returned from their mission, and then what felt like an eternity later, Kel ordered her people to attack.

For a second, nothing happened, as everyone processed the command and accepted the reality of imminent fighting and possible death. Owen had noticed that such an interval existed before most battles, and in his brain, he had come to regard it as a sorrowful, haunting song inside every one of them sung in a minor key reminiscent of a funeral dirge that was shot through with stark courage.

A second later, the period of stifling stillness was shattered when their archers pulled back their bowstrings and fired at the Scanran guards, most of whom crashed onto the ground immediately and never arose again.

As he and the other members of Kel's little army surged into the slave camp, Owen saw the refugees who had been slipped knives by the pets break out of their manacles and kill their captors. As his sword passed through a Scanran's heart, and he moved on to engage his next foe, he noticed that many of the refugees were slaughtering the slavers in particularly agonizing fashions.

Given the refugee's collective quest for vengeance, the battle wasn't as jolly as it could have been, because the refugees killed too many of the enemy too quickly to make it feel like a splendid struggle for their liberation. Still, he couldn't blame them when he saw the bloody scars on many of their backs where the slavers had whipped them and spotted how some of them had faces that were almost purple from being punched.

Sickened, Owen scrutinized his feet rather than study the refugees any further, or risk meeting any of their eyes. Before this evening, he had not considered himself sheltered, since he had killed beings and experienced the deaths of friends. He had seen bodies desecrated by Stormwings, and he had tended to wounded soldiers. He had witnessed a million things that he wished that he could forget and knew that he never would. Yet, he felt like nothing more than a wet-behind-the-ears first year page who couldn't even throw a punch properly right now.

When he had looked at the refugees, he had recognized that he had never suffered as they had. Indeed, his mind was still trying to wrap itself around the fact that he was seeing people who had been whipped. Intellectually, he knew that such a brutal punishment existed, but he had never witnessed firsthand the dreadful welts it produced and had no interest in beholding them ever again. Injuring a person in a fight was acceptable, but torturing someone who had come under your control was just plain wrong, not to mention nauseating.

Of course, he told himself as he watched Neal, whose nostrils were flaring and whose emerald eyes were smoldering, begin to minister to the physical wounds of the battered refugees, he should have expected nothing better from slavers. After all, slavers were scum. They supported themselves by trafficking in human flesh. They thought of other human beings as objects to be bought and sold for a profit margin. When they looked at a person, they didn't see a complete, complex individual with unique talents, fears, dreams, and loved ones—they saw a method of making money. How slavery could be viewed as acceptable in so many non-Tortallan countries mystified and revolted him.

He was wrenched out of his contemptuous contemplation of slavers by Tobe shouting frantically at Kel, "Lady, they ain't here! Loey and Meech and Gydo and them, they ain't here!"

At his words, Owen cringed, realizing that he had not seen any children in the fray. The fact that he knew that they hadn't been killed, but had, instead, been taken ahead to Blayce's lair wasn't much of a consolation. After all, being taken to Blayce was nothing more than a stay of execution, because once the children were taken to him, they would be murdered. Then, their souls would be used to animate killing machines that would be sent against the Tortallans.

Picturing the cute little boy Tobe had described clinging to his sister's skirts, the girl that Tobe had described tending to her brother so diligently and eagerly anticipating morning weapon practice, and the other girl that Tobe had fallen in love with because of how graceful she looked when she was practicing and how pretty she looked when she laughed, Owen felt his stomach churn. The idea of them dying was awful enough, but the notion of them not being allowed to know peace or justice when they perished was even worse, especially when he reflected on the fact that being used as monsters against their own people would probably be the last way that they would want to be employed.

The blood in his veins boiled with a hopeless fury, and he suddenly suspected that the refugees might have lashed out all the harder at the slavers because it had been their sons and daughters who had been taken against their will to Blayce the scumbag. Owen could understand their wrath. After all, he may not have had children, but he had two younger sisters. Although Olivia and Opal had annoyed him when they were little with their squealing for no reason, giggling at things that were not amusing, screaming at the sight of harmless bugs, and expecting him to play dolls with them, and although they vexed him when they were older by thinking that he was interested in listening to them describe their crushes, he still loved them. Despite everything, they were still family, and if anyone wanted to hurt them, that person would have to get past him first. He mocked his sisters, yes, but he would also die to protect them. He expected that parents felt a similar overpowering compulsion to defend their children with their lives.

It must have killed something inside every one of the adult refugees to know that they had been unable to save their children. We'll save the children, though, Owen promised himself fiercely. We'll save them all, and in the process save all the Tortallans their monsters would have killed.

As he reached this conclusion, he heard a woman whose back was bloody from her shoulders all the way down to her waist confirm that the children had indeed been taken to Blayce, but the refugees did not know which why they had headed.

"Where did they go across the ford?" he heard himself demand in a brusquer voice than was normal with him. The words came out of him without any real thought on his part. Some part of him had seized power over the rest of him, and that part of him was screaming at him that he had to act. He had to move. He had to do something. If he didn't, he would become paralyzed by his own emotions. He couldn't afford to feel too much.

"Upriver," answered one of the male refugees. "Up the Pakkai."

Kel nodded her understanding. Then, she ordered some soldiers to drag the bodies and wagons into the woods so that anybody who passed by wouldn't notice that there had been fighting here, directed Merric to post sentries on the road to the ford, and asked Tobe to round up the horses. Owen found nothing odd about her commands until she said, "Everyone, collect weapons and food. You'll need them on your way back."

Hoping that by "everyone," Kel meant only the refugees, because he had no intention of returning to Tortall as long as the refugee children were in Stenmun's clutches, Owen scowled. He opened his mouth to ask her what exactly she meant when Esmond pressed, indicating that he thought that all of them, including Kel, should be returning to Tortall, "What do you mean, 'you'll need them'?"

"Exactly what she says," Neal replied wearily, speaking for Kel as he healed a woman's shoulder and a man's bruised chin at the same time. "She's going after the little ones, and Stenmun, and Blayce." As Esmond made incredulous sputtering noises, he continued, locking eyes with Kel, "You'd better tie me to my horse after I get this lot fit to ride."

Between Neal and Merric, Owen thought, he would have seen enough of his friends tied to their mounts to last him a lifetime.

"I want you to return with them," Kel told Neal, resting her fists on her hips.

"Not a chance," Neal retorted, and the hard expression in his eyes made it plain that he would not be persuaded to return to Tortall before Kel did, a position that Owen happened to share.

"They go without me and my boys, too," added Dom, handing a sword to one of the convict soldiers that they had just freed from the slavers. "My orders were to stay with you."

Kel glowered, as the convict Dom had offered the weapon to declared, "We're stayin', too, me an' my squad."

Exasperation rising on her face, Kel glanced at Owen. He met her gaze unwaveringly, indicating that he wasn't about to go home without saving the refugee children and trying to help her defeat Blayce and Stenmun. Yes, he knew that he could return to Tortall, and his punishment would probably be less severe, but he didn't want to go back. He wanted to help Kel rescue all of her people, not half of them. After all, Lord Wyldon had taught him to complete every task, and, anyway, he had always been the sort of person who would have walked back into the worst part of the underworld as soon as he was lucky enough to manage to escape it if he thought it was necessary. Now was no time to change his habits.

Kel seemed to read this in his face, for she sighed and turned away from him. In the end, she failed to convince Tobe not to join them as well, although she managed to convince many of the refugees to return with Merric, Seaver, and Esmond. Also, she managed to convince Merric that it was indeed necessary for her to go after the children, Blayce, and Stenmun, even though he wished that she would go back to Tortall now.

Once it was determined who would return to Tortall and who would continue on with Kel, all those who weren't waiting for Neal to heal them went off to prepare for their journeys, but Owen stayed where he was.

"I could help you," he offered Neal, going to stand beside him.

"How?" Neal asked, as irritable as a wasp. "Did you develop a healing Gift overnight or something, and magically receive training in it?"

"No," Owen responded, watching as Neal's green Gift flowed into a man with a welt from a whip marring his face. "I have tended to wounded soldiers before, though. I can wrap bandages and clean cuts. I'm not as good as another healer, but I'm better than nobody. If I clean their cuts, you won't have to do that with your Gift, and you can save your magic."

"I'm surprised that the Stump, great warrior stoic that he is, would teach his squire anything to do with healing, since healing is for wimps," snorted Neal, who was starting to make Owen regret his offer of assistance.

"He didn't teach me," Owen answered impatiently. "I can learn some things on my own taking care of wounded friends, you know."

"Fair enough. I guess Alanna and I aren't the only ones who want to know how to put together bodies as well as dismantle them," conceded Neal, his manner softening at last. Waving a hand toward the river, he added, "Go get some water, then, so you can help me clean some of these cuts. Make sure you collect the blood in buckets, too, so we can use it to paint the Royal Palace a nice crimson when we return to Corus."

"I guess I'd better get that water to help clean the cuts, because it'll be the only way the refugees will have a fighting chance with you as their healer," Owen teased, his gray eyes glinting at Neal. Grinning at Neal's scowl, he snatched up two buckets and raced off to the river before Neal could retort.


	32. Chapter 32

Whittling

Owen crept through the darkness in the undergrowth along the side of the road, keeping one eye riveted on the ground before him and the other upon Stenman's road guard whom Kel had assigned him to kill. After a day's riding following the items the children had dropped along the road, they had caught up with Stenmun, and now they were going to start whittling. Oh, Stenmun would not be pleased when he discovered that Owen and the others had killed all of his sentries.

Owen was about a yard away from the Scanran now, and his mind was so preoccupied with imagining Stenmun's fury that his foot landed on a stick with what seemed to him a resounding snap. Reflexively, he froze, his hand flying to his sword hilt. However, the soldier did not appear to have heard Owen's noisy movement, because his body had chosen to betray him with a coughing fit. As the Scanran cursed quietly, mumbling something about a cold, Owen silently thanked Mithros and slipped forward again.

The instant he came within striking distance, he drew back his arm to cut the Scanran through, but the other man must have heard that movement, because he swung around, his eyes wide and his hand darting to his sword. It was already too late for him, though. Owen's weapon plunged into his chest before he could even remove his sword from its scabbard. Blood soaked Owen's blade, and, even in the dark, he could see his opponent's eyes defocus. The breath left the Scanran's lungs in one dry rasp and never returned. Confident that the man was dead, Owen withdrew his sword and watched the man collapse on the dirt, coating the road in blood.

Sheathing his sword, Owen spun around to report to Kel that he had been successful. While he moved through the sticks and leaves, he reflected on how lucky he had been. After all, if the guard hadn't coughed at the same time he had snapped the stick, it might have been his corpse back there. It had only been a whim of fate or the gods that had saved him then.

The notion made him scowl, since he knew that if Lord Wyldon were here, he would call him careless and remind him that careless people died quickly and often unpleasantly on the battlefield. Of course, Wyldon, for the first time in almost eight years, wasn't around to reprimand him. This idea should have comforted him, but, instead, it disconcerted him. Wyldon's watchful, cold gaze and his frequent criticisms may not have been fun, but they were a constant in Owen's life that he didn't want gone. Then again, they weren't exactly gone, as they were now another voice in the cacophony of his head...

He knew that his knightmaster would have called the Scanran careless, too, for not looking around him more carefully after he coughed instead of launching into a steady stream of curses. As he signaled to Kel that he had successfully dispatched the guard, Owen fell back with everyone but Kel, who remained to spy on the Scanrans. Listening to the wails of the babies that pierced the air shortly after dawn, Owen thought that the guard he had killed should have been more cautious. After all, the man had been standing watch in the night, and that was always dangerous.

You had to be careful when on sentry duty before dawn, he knew, because the dark was generous to your enemies in that it allowed them to sneak up on you unseen. You didn't have to fear the dark, but you did have to respect it and be wary of it, because it was powerful, and it was fickle. It would serve you one moment, and in the next it would work with your foe against you. In one moment, it would save your life, and in the next it would kill you. It wasn't malicious; it was just utterly indifferent to you and everybody else.

Blocking these thoughts from his mind, Owen devoted himself to helping everyone except Kel, who was still spying on the Scanrans, create a fire from dry wood that wouldn't smoke. Once they had lit the fire, he praised the gods for the fact that the wind was blowing away from the Scanrans, which meant that it wouldn't carry the smell of their fire to their enemies. Then, he speared a wedge of bread and cheese onto a stick and began toasting it over the flames.

"Isn't it nice to to be able to eat some warm food again?" he asked Neal, who was cooking alongside him, cheerily, watching his bread blacken.

"Yes," agreed Neal, not sounding particularly happy, removing his bread and cheese from the fire and munching on it. "It'd be even nicer to have food that didn't have any weevils in it, though."

"The heat makes the weevils die, and then they don't move around when you bite into them by mistake," Owen reminded him, managing to sound cheerful even as he chewed on his bread and bit off the head of a weevil, which he had to spit out.

"Oh, that makes it so much better," Neal snorted, pulling out a weevil from his bread between bites. "You know that bugs carry disease, don't you, Owen? Stuff like this makes my inner healer do cartwheels like a deranged court jester."

As he finished his toast, Owen grinned at the mental image of this. However, his amusement seemed to vex Neal, who grumbled, "You can smile now, but don't expect me to patch you up when the enemy tears you to slivers again.

While Neal placed another wedge of bread and cheese on a his stick, Owen retorted, "You can't mind the weevils too much if you are draining our supplies with second helpings."

"Don't be ridiculous." Neal shot him the withering look he had perfected during their page years. "I would never be so rude as to have second helpings before everyone had a first serving. Besides, I am not going to eat anymore of this weevil-infested toast than is absolutely necessary to prevent me from toppling off my horse or perishing of starvation. No, my dear rock-headed companion, this piece of bread and cheese is for Kel."

"I see that Lady Alanna didn't manage to teach you any manners," Owen observed, as Kel approached them.

"She was too busy serving the realm by teaching me how to swing a sword about and heal my comrades-in-arms who are foolish enough to place themselves in life-threatening situations," answered Neal, as the toast he was making for Kel turned brown, and he pulled it out of the flames.

"She should have served the realm by killing you, instead," Owen muttered, but, unfortunately, Neal didn't hear him, because he had bustled over to Kel with the toast.

Now that Kel had returned, everybody moved into a flurry of movement, scarfing down the last of their meals, banking the fire, and then mounting their horses. As they did so, Kel called, "Bows, everyone. We'll use the road till our forward scout spots the enemy. After that, we take to the woods. It's risky, but we have to chance it. They've got little ones with all the men. No shooting unless a man dismounts and leaves the children on the horse. We can do this if we go at it carefully."

Following her orders, they rode on at a trot, making good time and gaining on Stenmun. Unfortunately, they had not traveled far before Stormwings began gathering along the sides of the road near Stenmun's men.

"Blast it," Lofren hissed beside Owen. "Now Stenmun will know that we're following him."

"His dead sentries probably cued him into that." Owen shrugged. He wasn't worried. He was just looking forward to the final showdown that he knew they were approaching. Oh, what a glorious fight that would be. With such excitement ahead, he simply didn't have the time for fear.

"Well, these Stormwings will be the proof that he needs to back up his hunch," grunted Lofren. "Forgive me for not celebrating their arrival."

"Nobody ever celebrates the arrival of Stormwings," Owen said, rolling his eyes. "Their smell alone is enough to depress most people."

Before Lofren could reply to this, the forward scout, Nat, returned, announcing that the enemy was in sight. As Nat disappeared again, the rest of them fanned out into the woods, as Kel had instructed them to do earlier. Now that they were traveling in the forest, their progress was hampered by the fact that they had to watch the ground carefully for things like rabbit holes that might break a mount's leg.

After what felt like an eon of creeping through the woods like that, Nat slipped back to them to report that the Scanrans had stopped to water their horses.

To Owen's delight, because he was desperate to get some action after the painfully slow journey through the forest, Kel signaled for him, a convict soldier, and a tough-looking refugee woman to go forward and whittle away as many Scanrans as they could. Just as he had last night, Owen crept through the undergrowth, although this time he had two companions. They did not have far to go before they saw the Scanrans, who had dismounted, leaving the children in the saddles, as the horses drank from the stream.

His heart pounding at what felt like four times its typical rate as it pumped his body with adrenaline, Owen took cover along with the convict and the woman behind a giant oak.

"I've got the bearded fat guy riding the bay," he muttered to his comrades, already visualizing the path that his arrow would have to take in order to hit his target in the heart.

"I'll take the scrawny one next to him who looks like an overgrown twig," whispered the convict.

"I'll take the one to the right of him who looks like an ugly crow," the woman said softly.

Quickly, he nocked the arrow in the center of his bowstring, and let the shaft of the arrow rest upon the bow just above his handgrip, as the convict and woman did the same. He held the bowstring with his first three fingers and used his thumb to stabilize the arrow. Then, he drew his arm back until his thumb was against his jawbone, and checked to make sure that his companions were ready to shoot, as well. They needed to all fire at once, because the instant the first arrow was loosed, the Scanrans would be alerted to their presence, and they needed to take out as many of the enemy now as they could. Seeing that the convict and the woman were prepared to shoot, Owen released his arrow, just as the other two did the same.

Their three arrows soared through the air and landed in their targets before the Scanrans could realize what had happened. As the three Scanrans they had hit fell into the river, turning the water crimson, the remaining Scanrans screamed, yanking their horses away from the now tainted water and looking over their shoulders to pinpoint where the attack had come. Taking advantage of their confusion, Owen nocked another arrow, drew back his string, and released his arrow into the stomach of another Scanran.

While the Scanrans reached for their weapons, Owen was about to take aim at another Scanran when the convict snaked out his hand and snatched Owen's wrist to restrain him. "Don't ye be gettin' greedy," he advised in a low voice.

"That's an odd comment coming from a convict," Owen glowered, but, seeing that the Scanrans had figured out their location, he fell back with the other two without any further protest. As he fled back to join the main group, he thought that the way they were crashing through the woods now was a powerful contrast with how they had crept through earlier.

As they returned to Kel, Owen scowled as he watched the convict gesture to her that they had killed four of Stenmun's men. The convict was a former bandit. Owen knew that, because he had overheard the man exchanging stories about his daring life as a bandit with Nat with an astounding lack of remorse. As far as Owen was concerned, that made him about as evil as Blayce, Stenmun, or King Maggot.

Seeing his scowl, the bandit offered him a grin that split across his ruddy cheeks, and panted, "Do ye reckon Lady Knight will give us a shiny trophy for makin' four outta four shots?"

"If she does, she'd better lock it up carefully before the ceremony so you don't steal it before she can give it to you," Owen remarked icily, wiping sweat from his face.

"Ye're worse than Sir Nealan." With that, the convict went off to remount his horse, which suited Owen just fine.

A moment later, Nat returned saying that the Scanrans were on the move again, and they were riding off after the Scanrans at a faster pace now. As he rode on, Owen wondered if he had been too harsh on the former bandit. Maybe he was wrong to focus so much on what the man had done wrong. Perhaps he should only concern himself with what the man was doing now. Maybe he was starting to confuse justice with vengeance. Perhaps his mother would have wanted him to forgive this seemingly unrepentant former bandit.

He didn't know. He couldn't know, because he could hardly remember his mother at all, and so he had no real way of determining what she would want in any given circumstance. Sometimes he thought he had a good idea of what she would want, but he could never be sure. After all, he couldn't even remember whether she had been a free spirit like Opal or a serious person like Olivia. He couldn't remember if she was funny like Opal or smart like Olivia. he couldn't remember if she was a good sewer like Opal or a good dancer like Olivia. He couldn't remember anything about her, honestly, and he had to rely on what others told him to form an image of her.

For maybe the thousandth time in his life, when he was bewildered, he wished for a mother to tell him what to do, but that wish never came true, no matter how much he and his sisters prayed. He knew that the failure of the gods to give their mother back was the reason that Opal had stopped praying, and sometimes he was tempted to join her in her boycott against deities. Right now, he wasn't feeling rebellious so, he just prayed to the Great Mother, who was supposed to care for motherless children, instead. If he couldn't have a real mother beside him, he would settle for supernatural one in the sky.


	33. Chapter 33

The Die Has Been Cast

"Does Lady really expect us to sleep durin' the middle of the afternoon?" Tobe asked Owen quietly. The two of them were lying on their sleeping mats on the earthen floor of the village hut they were camping in, waiting for night to fall so that the villagers could sneak them into Blayce's castle.

Looking around at the empty windows and doorframe that gave the hut the doleful appearance of a near-sighted man who had lost his spectacles and that would provide vitrually no protection against the stringent wind and the bitter cold of a Scanran winter, Owen felt his throat clog with fury. His anger mounted when he remembered the emaciated villagers, and their horror stories about Blayce killing their children and hanging people in cages from the palace walls to wait for death if they tried to keep back some of the crops they grew so that they wouldn't starve. It wasn't right that Blayce could abuse these people so.

Yes, Owen knew that there was inequity in Tortall, but it wasn't as bad as this. The king regulated how heavily lords could tax their peasants, and Owen couldn't imagine King Jonathan allowing a powerful mage like Numair to murder children in order to manufacture killing devices, nor could he envision Tortallan commanders like Lord Raoul, General Vanget, or Lord Wyldon leading children to such a monster like Stenmun did. The people in charge in Tortall, he thought, could recognize how far was too far. They could see when they were hurling the baby out with the washwater. They understood when the ends failed to justify the means.

Maybe that was the problem, he mused, and noted that the lull in the action was wounding his morale by providing him with an opportunity to be pessimistic. Perhaps as long as evil beings permitted themselves to violate the rules of morality that decent individuals abided by, they would always have the advantage.

Ah, he reminded himself, but evil is a cruel and merciless parent who eats its own young. Besides, the gods and goddesses would only stand to see so much injustice and suffering before they intervened. Righteous people got the chance to be instruments of the divine, and being a step away from the divine even for a moment was probably the greatest honor that any mortal could receive.

"Owen?" Tobe waved a hand in front of his face. "Is your brain absent without leave again or are you just sleepin' with your eyes open?"

"My brain is absent without leave like the rest of me," Owen answered merrily, thinking that over the past few days he had mastered the art of casually joking about committing treason. Maybe he was becoming more morbid due to excessive socialization with Neal, or perhaps he was just developing gallows humor early. After all, Lord Wyldon had taught him to not put off until tomorrow that which could be done today. "It would be a scary magic trick if I left it behind in Tortall while the rest of me roamed around Scanra with Kel, wouldn't it?"

Before Tobe could reply, Owen added, "What did you ask me, anyway?"

"I wanted to know if you thought that Lady was really expectin' us to get some shut eye while the sun is still out in full strength," Tobe informed him over the resounding snores of Wolset, one of Dom's men who seemed to be able to sleep anywhere, including on beds of jagged rocks.

"Well, she did tell us to rest." Owen shrugged, observing inwardly that rest was a loaded term these days. "That's not necessarily the same thing as sleeping, though, especially if you are prone to nightmares."

"True," Tobe muttered, fumbling around in his pocket and withdrawing a pair of dice. Running a finger over their edges and indents, he examined them closely. "Loey gave 'em to me."

"They're very nice," said Owen, deciding to focus on the smooth, carved wood rather than on the fact that they were unpainted and plain-looking. There was no point in mentioning all the fancy toys he had played with as a child in Jesslaw to an indentured servant who had probably never had one until he had gone into Kel's service. That wouldn't just be impolite--it would be unkind, and he might have been blunt, but he wasn't guilty of being intentionally cruel. Anyway, there was no reason to mention the lead soldiers his father bought him and the glass dolls his father had purchased for his sisters because that would just remind him that his father had paid for them in a desperate attempt to compensate for the fact that he could hardly bear to look at any of his offspring after his wife died.

"She made 'em herself, and I'm going to keep 'em safe unhtil I've rescued her and the others, and we can play a game together again," finished Tobe, and Owen swallowed, as he pictured the love that must have gone into the creation of the dice. Knowing how much love had been carved into the dice somehow made them more valuable than all of Owen's lead soldiers put together. No wonder Tobe kept the dice in his pocket like a talisman if they had been hewn by the girl he loved.

The idea filled Owen with longing for Margarry. He would have given an arm and a leg for the chance to see her or speak to her again before he went into the final showdown with Blayce and Stenmun. Of course, his mind realized that such a bargain was impossible. Still, he did wish that he had thought to pack one of her letters with him. Reading her words and gazing at her handwriting would be the next best thing to hearing her clear, wry voice and seeing her beauty face to face in the same manner that the next best thing to playing and winning was playing and losing.

Forcing himself out of his romantic daydream, Owen watched as Tobe tossed his dice onto the dirt floor, and both of the dice landed on six. "The die has been cast now," Tobe mumbled, staring at the dice as though trying to divine a meaning from their numbers. "You know, I heard that expression a lot from gamblers at old Alvik's inn, but I was always a bit confused about what it actually meant. Does it mean that the die has landed and nothing can be done to change that, or does it mean that the die has been thrown into the air but nobody has a clue as to which way it will land when it does?"

"It means that the die is in the air, and we can still hit it so it lands the way we want it to," Owen responded, not liking the helpless quality of both of Tobe's interpretations. As he caught sight of Neal, Kel, and Dom talking outside and by the expressions on their faces not resting at all, he pushed himself to his feet, waved at Tobe, and stepped over Wolset out of the hut.

Once he had exited the hut, he walked down the dirt lane until he was behind Kel, Neal, and Dom. As he approached, he overheard Dom announce that he had faith in Kel and Neal second him.

"Me too," Owen declared, and grinned when he saw all three of them jump in alarm. Although he hadn't been attempting to creep up on them, it was nice to know that his footwork was quiet enough that he could do that. Remembering that he had come out here to lighten the grim expressions on their faces, he went on, "It'll be jolly, Kel. An evil mage destroyed, a chance to take a bite out of Stenmun and his men--isn't this why you became a knight?"

Looking first at Kel and then at Neal, he tried to convey ith his eager, earnest gray eyes that this was the stuff of legends and that they were lucky to be a part of it all. When they continued to gape at him as if he had suddenly sprouted another head or two, he persisted, "It's why I want to be a knight. I may not get to be one now, but it'll be almost worth it to rob Maggur of the killing devices. And I thought we were supposed to rest, and here you three aren't doing it."

"We're coming, Mother." Kel offered him a crooked smile, employing their nickname for her against him. "Or did you learn that from Wyldon?"

"Nope." He beamed at her, his eyes sparkling as he concluded that he was very good at raising people's spirits. "I learned it from you, _Mother_."

Then, he ducked as Kel made a swipe at his head and darted back to the hut, hearing the other three follow at a walk. When he returned to the hut, he climbed carefully over the snoring Wolset and settled onto his sleeping mat beside the now slumbering Tobe. A minute later, he heard Neal, Dom and Kel enter, and then rustling noises as they fell onto their sleeping mats.

As he lay there, staring down at his mat and pretending that it was dark out, he conjured up images of Margarry in his mind to give him strength in the coming battle. He recalled the sweet scent of rosewater that engulfed her. He picutred her hair and eyes, both as dark as tree bark. He thought of her lips, which were as pink as rose petals. If he kissed her on the lips, would they be as tender as rose petals? he wondered. Probably. After all, her lips had been wonderfully soft when they brushed against his cheek during her Midwinter visit to Giantkiller.

"Owen?" From Owen's right, Neal stretched out a hand and shook him. "Are you awake?"

"How am I supposed to answer if I'm asleep?" demanded Owen tersely, cross at being interrupted in the midst of contemplating Margarry's splendor."Anyway, after you shake someone like that, they'll certainly be awake even if they weren't before."

"You could answer if you sleep talk like Lady Alanna," hissed Neal, ignoring the second half of Owen's coment. "She's always muttering things like 'Inaudible m sound...behead...inaudible u sound...enemies...inaudible o sound.'"

"Well, now that you know I'm awake, what do you want?" pressed Owen impatiently.

"I want to know if you think that we'll win tonight's little engagement," explained Neal, his sharp green eyes drifting over to Kel's sleeping form, which was huddled too close to Dom for Owen's liking.

"The Chamber and that eerie seer girl seem to think that we have a good chance." Owen shrugged. "The Chamber has been around for centuries, hasn't it? It must have seen a lot. I trust its judgement."

"You believe in fate, then?" Neal arched his eyebrows at him skeptically.

"You don't?" Owen returned the look.

"I asked you first, so you really should have the courtesy to answer first, but no, even after studying under the Lioness for four interminably miserable years, I don't believe in fate. I think this world is too much of a mess for anything to be preordained, and I believe that we work for everything that we get, rather than the gods handing it to us for free on a silver platter."

"But there are an awful lot of coincidences for the gods not to have a hand in our lives, aren't there?" Owen pointed out.

"So you believe in destiny." Neal flapped his hand around the hut. "You reckon that all of this was predetermined. Well, in that case, what becomes of our choices? Do you deny us them?"

"No." Owen shook his head rapidly. "Life places us in positions where we have to make important decisions, and the gods, who know us beter than we know ourselves, already foresee what we will choose. As a result, they can plan for the future beyond our choices, but the decision itself is still ours. If our friends can know what we're going to do before we act, why can't the gods? If skilled chess players like my lord Wyldon can plan twenty moves ahead of their current one, how far ahead do you think the gods can plan things?"

"Pretty far, I guess," Neal groused, "and I suppose that we'll just have to hope that the gods planned for our imminent victory rather than defeat."

"They have to have," Owen whispered simply. "They can't possibly favor Blayce over us."

"Only time will tell, and not much time at that." Neal exhaled gustily. "Mithros, I would kill to have your crazy faith, Owen."

"It's not crazy," Owen hissed indignantly. With less hostility, he added, "Besides, you don't need to kill for it, Neal. We're friends, and friends share whatever they have." Thinking of Margarry, he amended, "Except girls, that is. Sharing girls is gross and wrong."

"Not to mention dangerous," remarked Neal in his most dry tone. "Those Yamani ladies are especially perilous with their razor-edged fans."

"Wimp," Owen scoffed, smirking at the mental image of Neal's bethroathed--Yukimi--beating him with her Yamani fan.

"Your savagery and utter lack of sympathy for my plight appall me," sniffed Neal haughtily, and, after that, the two of them drifted off to sleep.

They didn't awaken until after sunset. Once they got up, they rolled up their sleeping mats along with everyone else. After he had eaten the nuts and dried fruit that a Bazhir tribesman accompanying them had brought, which would give him energy but would not fill him so much that he would cramp while fighting, Owen put on Happy's armor.

"You're going to have to fight alone," Owen told his steed, as he readied him for battle. "Kel says it'll be more efficient if we're separated with me on foot. Will you be okay without me?"

Happy snorted and butted his armored head gently against Owen's. Owen imagined that Happy was reminding him that the horse had survived perfectly well for many years without him.

"Good." Owen patted Happy as he finished preparing his mount. He was aware that he must have sounded like a fool addressing Happy as though the horse could understand him, but he didn't feel silly. After all, Happy acted like he understood, and, besides, Lord Wyldon talked to Heart as if the horse were twice as intelligent as most people. "You'll prove that one Tortallan warhorse is better than seven of Stenmun's men, won't you?"

This time, the stallion neighed and flicked its tail, which Owen imagined was an affirmative. Beaming, he patted Happy again, and then ran off to don his armor.


	34. Chapter 34

The Final Showdown

Excitement pounded through Owen as he burst through the gate that Kel's group had just opened for him, Dom's squad, Neal, and the warhouses. As he raced into the courtyard of Blayce's castle with the others, he could feel his blood charge through his veins at top speed, buoyed on by his rapidly beating heart.

The moment he had been waiting for since he left Tortall was here at last. Now was his chance to do his part in destroying Blayce and Stenmun, and he wouldn't let that opportunity go to waste while there was still breath in him. He would have added rescuing the refugee children to the list, but he knew that Kel's group had already slipped them out through the runoff tunnels that had allowed Kel and her group to infiltrate the stronghold in the first place.

Jumping into the fray without restraint, Owen plunged his sword into the stomach of a Scanran who had just leapt out of a window in his bolted barracks. Ignoring the foul smell that washed over him when he did so, overpowering even the perpetual odor of urine, sweat, vomit, and blood that mingled on every battlefield, he jerked his blade further downward, slicing through the intestines.

Turning away before he could get a good look at the man's innards because he wasn't in the mood to add his vomit to the stench, he saw Happy kick an enemy soldier in the head, knocking him to the ground with a crimson gash on his forehead.

"Good job, Happy," Owen congratulated his steed. Then, he realized that Kel, standing not too far off, was busy holding off two sword-bearing Scarans with her glaive. Nodding his head at her, he shouted at Happy, "She could use some help, couldn't she?"

Apparently, his mount had no difficulty comprehending him, because as Owen cut one of Kel's foes down from behind before he could hope to spin around and meet the new threat, Happy butted the other on the head. Shocked, the soldier crumpled to the ground, and Kel finished him off, her glaive swishing neatly through flesh and bone.

Once he was done coming to Kel's aid, Owen twisted around to engage another Scanran who had broken out of the barracks in battle. As he did so, he felt himself fall into a fighting rhythm in which he never had to think about his next move, because thinking was too slow, and in which he relied on instinct, instead. He attacked and parried without being aware of it; he lunged, dodged, and retreated without any conscious effort on his part. His body was engaged in a lethal battle dance with his opponent, and his mind had no role to play in it. His brain couldn't be trusted when a single misstep might mean death―only his muscles and his instincts could be.

Finally, his enemy's foot slipped in a puddle of gore. Desperately, the man fought to steady himself, but Owen had already seized on the opening, bringing his sword slashing across the man's kneecap. The Scanran cursed, wobbled, and took a no doubt excruciatingly painful step backward. However, he did not fall down or stop fighting.

Shaking his head in grim admiration of the man's tenacity, Owen unleashed a barrage of strikes on his opponent. The flurry of his attack proved to be too much for the injured man, and his movements became sloppy and choppy as he struggled to block Owen's blows. It wasn't long before Owen penetrated the Scanran's guard, his blade plunging into the man's chest.

As the Scanran finally fell to the ground, Owen withdrew his blood covered sword from the man's chest. When he spun around to find another enemy to fight, he saw Happy butt another man with his armored head and send another Scanran flying into a trough with a mighty kick. At this sight, amusement bubbled in Owen's throat, and he might have laughed if at that second he hadn't noticed something that sobered him immediately.

A cold knot of fury forming in his heart, Owen watched as a fierce-looking, bellowing Scanran wielding a gigantic double-bladed ax managed to bully a group of enemy soldiers into a defensive position around a well.

"We can't let them break the rules like that, can we, Happy?" Owen asked his horse. Happy whinnied in response. Then, his tail flailing behind him, he charged at the Scarnrans clustered around the well, Owen running along behind him.

To Owen's surprise, Peachblossom thundered past him to join Happy. Seeing the onrushing warhorses, the men around the well scattered. His eyes blazing triumphantly, Owen took off with Happy after one band of fleeing Scanrans, while Peachblossom pursued another group.

As he battled the Scanrans, he was grateful to have Happy on the other side of the group, stomping on feet, biting hands, kicking, and headbutting. After all, Owen thought, as his sword blocked a volley from one of the Scanrans and then launched its own assault, his muscles were getting sore. Sweat was dripping down his back and dropping from his forehead into his eyes, stinging them with salt that he couldn't afford to take the time to blink away.

He was starting to think that he had finally bitten off more than he could chew when he saw from what felt like a league away, a Scanran's blade pierce into Happy's stomach. As the horse whinnied shrilly in protest, Owen snapped at himself to move forward and defend his mount. Yet, his legs, which felt as though they had suddenly been carved from ice, obstinately refused to take even a single step forward. Horror filled him as he recognized that he was locked in place by his own traitor body, as the Scanran's sword plunged deeper into Happy's belly.

Happy's whinny became gradually more strangled until it faded off into nothing. Then, less than a second later, his glazed eyes rolled up into his head, and he fell to the ground with a resounding thud. His mind and heart reluctant to contemplate what Happy's toppling to the ground meant, Owen noted with a savage satisfaction that the horse had crushed two astonished Scanrans when he fell.

Consumed by that same savagery, Owen found that he was no longer exhausted, for his body had gone past his fatigue to a place of sheer will fueled by the ire that had raged within him when Happy fell. Discovering that he no longer felt like an iceberg, he lashed out at the men encircling him, fighting as he never had before. His sword swept off the head of the man who had wounded Happy with a brutal precision. Then, as the blood gushed from the decapitated man, he pivoted, plunged his blade into the heart of another man, and then kicked a third in the stomach with all the force he could muster.

When the man doubled over, Owen bisected him with his weapon. For a moment, he stared around, stunned, looking for another opponent, but he saw none nearby, and the few remaining Scanrans were being thoroughly thrashed by the Tortallans. Happy was avenged, and there was nothing more that Owen could do now.

The effects of adrenaline wearing off swiftly now that he was no longer in a furious battle to not only survive but to avenge Happy, Owen collapsed next to his horse. Even though he knew it was hopeless, he rested his palms on the stallion's bloody chest, wishing fervently that he had the healing Gift like Neal. If he did, he could make Happy whole again…Of course, he probably would need more than the healing Gift to fix the horse before him. He would require the ability to perform necromancy like Blayce.

The idea of performing what was regarded by everyone as just about the blackest magic of all made his stomach churn with disgust, although he told himself that if he had that power, he at least would have used it for good and not for evil like Blayce had.

Of course, it didn't matter that he couldn't perform necromancy, he told himself, because Happy wasn't dead. He couldn't be. Happy was a constant in Owen's life, and he couldn't just keel over and die any more than the sun or the moon could. Happy couldn't perish, because Owen needed him too much.

A second after this passed through his mind, Owen berated himself for the illogical egocentricity of that notion. After all, he didn't have the power to keep people and animals that he loved alive, and the Black God would never refrain from taking anyone Owen cared about just because Owen cared about them.

No, Happy was dead, and he had to accept that, he realized as the tears glistening in his eyes began to flow down his cheeks. A vague element of his brain that wasn't dominated by grief for Happy recognized that he must have looked foolish sobbing over a dead horse as though it were a person. However, he didn't care if he looked stupid, since Happy, who had fought as valiantly as any knight, deserved to be honored. Besides, Happy was as good a friend as any person could be.

Yes, Happy was far more than just a horse in the same way that Jump transcended the definition of dog. Happy had helped Owen survive jousting with Lord Wyldon, fought with him in battle, and comforted him when he lost friends. Remembering with a jolt how Happy had managed communicate so well with head thrusts, snorts, and whinnies, Owen thought about how his horse had been surprisingly good to talk to. For some reason, this idea made him think of how Happy had tried to steal the food that Margarry had sent him, and he muttered, "Happy, I would give you all the people food you wanted if you came back to life now."

Owen knew Happy wouldn't come back to life, though. That was the problem. He lost track of time as he knelt beside his horse, oblivious to what was going on around him now that the battle had ended.

An unknown amount of time later, a hand clasped his shoulder, and, stiffening in alarm, Owen craned his neck back to see Tobe standing above him.

"Sorry 'bout your horse." Tobe nodded down at Happy. "He was a brilliant fighter."

"Yes," agreed Owen, discovering that talking in his normal voice was tougher than he recalled. "He took down two of them with him, too."

"It's how he'd have wanted to go," said Tobe. Grabbing Owen's hand, he tugged him to his feet, and, as he was dragged upright, Owen saw that Neal was busy patching up the injured, while the unwounded collected the Tortallan dead and worked on building a pyre. "We could use some help cleanin' this place up, if you don't mind."

"I don't mind," Owen informed him. At another time, he might have smiled at the other young man, but, at the present, quirking his lips upward in a grin was not only the last thing he wanted to do right now, it also seemed like an impossible feat for him to accomplish.

As he walked over to where Neal was ministering to the injured, Owen found that his feet and ankles were cramped from kneeling, and that, as a result, his gait wavered more than he wished. Obviously, Neal detected his wobbling steps, because as Owen approached, he looked up from an ashen and hallucinating Corporal Fulcher of Dom's squad to observe sharply, "You've seen better years. Mithros, you look like you swam in a river of blood. What did you do, anyway―lob off pieces of your own flesh with your sword to save the enemy the trouble?"

"I'm not injured," answered Owen, dunking his hands in a bucket of water to clean them. "The blood is from Scanrans and―and Happy."

"Wonderful." Neal returned his harried gaze to Fulcher. "If you aren't here to be mended by the friendly healer, may I ask what you are getting under my feet for?"

"I've come to clean and bandage the cuts you don't want to waste your energy healing," Owen responded, grabbing a roll of cloth. Given a choice, he would rather tend to the wounded than collect the cold, glassy-eyed dead. At least treating the injured made him feel like he was helping others.

"Do that, and be quiet, then," snapped Neal, as Owen cleaned and wrapped a shallow slice along Saefas' right arm.

A retort blazed on Owen's tongue, but seeing the fatigue lining Neal's features and dulling his vivid eyes, he decided that voicing it would be pointless and petty. At the best of times, Neal's acerbic personality was an acquired taste, and exhaustion did nothing to sweeten him. However, he had reason to be tired after fighting such a major battle, and then having his remaining energy drained through healing others. Indeed, the idea of having his energy siphoned into others was enough to make Owen want to collapse.

"Don't act like a bear with a hangover, cousin," admonished Dom, who was rubbing a soaking cloth over Fulcher's fevered forehead.

Abruptly, as he finished bandaging Saefas and moved onto the next person, Owen was grateful that he did not possess the healing Gift as Neal did. After all, magic came at a high price, and, while those who used the Gift to manipulate one of the four elements could derive some strength from the element they were manipulating, healing magic drew all its power from the spirit of the one doing the healing. It exerted a harrowing toll on its practitioners, and Owen was blessed not to be burdened with it, no matter what he had thought when he was mourning Happy earlier.

"You'd be as irritable as a bear with a hangover, too, if you had to contend with a patient who not only stubbornly refused to heal, but did not deign to even go to the bother of staying at the same dreadful spot, and instead insisted on getting progressively worse," snarled Neal, nodding at Fulcher, who now looked like he had become a ghost and whose deranged muttering had now subsided.

Swallowing at how close Fulcher was to slipping into the Black God's final embrace, Owen pushed his second patient away from him and began bandaging a third.

"Neal." His blue eyes moist and his tone hoarse, Dom extended his hand and clasped his cousin's wrist firmly. "Don't bother to heal Fulcher anymore."

"Don't bother to heal Fulcher?" echoed Neal, flaring up like dry summer grass when fire was put to it. Hearing him, Owen thought that another drawback of the healing Gift was the compulsion to cure everyone, and the guilt at failing. "Have you been drinking from the Fountain of Insanity again, Dom? You're his blasted sergeant in case you've forgotten. How can you possibly say such a thing?"

"I can say that because I know he won't make it no matter what you do," replied Dom, and Owen heard that he was tired, too―tired of all the suffering, the dying, and the victories that always contained a defeat. "You can't help him, and you need to use your strength on those whom you can save. Let Fulcher go gently into that good night. I'll make sure he's comfortable as he can be when he passes while you busy yourself with the others."

For a long moment, Neal did not respond. Then, he muttered bitterly, "I guess nothing can stand in the way of the brutal laws of triage." Before Owen or Dom could answer, he shoved himself to his feet, weaving slightly and grumbling at them, "Be careful when you stand. Someone has obviously been playing around with the gravity again."

As Neal stumbled off to heal more people, Dom, still brushing a cooling cloth along Fulcher's hairline, sighed. "Lord Raoul is going to disembowel me for getting two of my men killed. He hates training new boys. Of course, he'll probably force me to write letters home to their families first. He's not a fan of paperwork, either."

"If he disembowels you, he'll have to train up one more man," pointed out Owen, determining that it was silly to wrap bandages around cuts when his heart wasn't in it, and moving over to clutch Fulcher's hand, instead.

"True." Dom flashed a grin that was practically devoid of his usual mirth, and, therefore, was more reminiscent of a grimace. As he spoke, Fulcher stirred but did not wake, and Dom exhaled gustily again. "Mithros, I wish we had some herbs here to soothe his fever. Still, I guess the fever dulls the pain, and, at this rate, he might depart the world in this fitful sleep of his. At least that means that he won't die screaming for his mother like Lofren did. That has to count for something, although not much."

"Lofren died crying for his mother?" stuttered Owen, convinced that he had misheard, gawking at Dom. "Lofren was too tough and too cynical to have died calling out for his mother."

In fact, when it came down to it, Lofren was too tough to have died. It wasn't possible that Owen would never see him again, hear him make the worst of things with his sarcasm and grousing, or listen to his dry tone as he outlined legal technicalities that nobody paid any mind to.

"You know that most men who can still scream die howling for their mothers." Dom sounded bleaker than Owen had ever heard him, and, somehow, it slammed into his head that Lofren was truly gone. That meant that no matter how far he travelled he would never see or speak to Lofren again as long as his own life endured.

"Or begging the Black God to show mercy upon them and their souls," added Owen, gulping down the lump that had lodged itself in his throat. For one almost hysterical second, he wondered if he would be one of those who would appeal to the Black God if he was struck down on the battlefield. Of course, he couldn't cry out for his mother, since she was dead herself, but perhaps he would holler out Margarry's name in the vain hope that she would hear him and know how much he loved her…

Then, he remembered with a flash of pain why he was travelling down this gloomy lane of thought. Lofren. Lofren was dead. He struggled to fully absorb that fact, as he pictured Lofren's smirk, and heard the man's voice rise like a crescendo in his brain: "_Joys abound. We've been invited to join the party at last. I can't wait to join the fun_."

An instant later, a drowning silence flooded Owen's mind. A dead quiet, in fact, reflecting Lofren's now eternal silence.

"Sometimes I hate the Black God for robbing the world of its good men." Dom's thick tone resounded loudly in the quiet of Owen's head. "I especially loathe him when he steals the good men that I work with, eat with, fight alongside, argue with, and command."

"Sometimes I despise the Black God for killing those I care about, too," confessed Owen baldly, as Fulcher's hitching breathing began to become quieter and more spaced out, as though even the effort it required to breathe was becoming way too much for him.

"We're so blasphemous," remarked Dom, his eyes riveted on Fulcher's barely moving chest.

"The Black God is cruel." Owen shrugged, unfazed by this accusation.

"And we must be masochists to pick friends who have better odds of dying tomorrow than just about anybody else," snorted Dom over Fulcher's faint rasping.

"I wouldn't want any other sort of friends," declared Owen at his fiercest.

After that, neither of them had anything more to say to each other, so they just stayed by Fulcher's side, Owen clutching the corporal's hand and Dom sponging his face. Both of them listened to the whisper of his breathing and watched his slightly rising and falling chest. They saw it rise as he inhaled and sink as he exhaled for what felt like hours until the pattern ended when Fulcher released a rasp of air and didn't take any in again.

For a moment, Owen and Dom gazed numbly down at Fulcher, waiting for him to suck in more air. When he didn't, Owen let go of Fulcher's pulseless hand, as Dom took the cloth away from Fulcher's rapidly chilling body. Then, he buried his head in his palms and did not look up, mumbling from between his fingers that obscured his features, "At least Lofren won't be lonely now that one of the squad is with him."

His heart aching, Owen got up and moved so that he could clutch Dom's shoulder as Tobe had grasped his when he was kneeling over Happy's body. He wished he could devise words of comfort, but the problem with words was that they never were potent enough when they had to be, and, if no words could adequately describe the depths of grief, why waste valuable breath with them?

Sometimes, a shoulder squeeze conveyed more than a million words. A shoulder squeeze promised in every language that you were not alone, and that, no matter how many times this world tore your heart asunder, you would never be alone.

"Thanks." Finally, Dom glanced up at him, and Owen elected not to mention his red-rimmed eyes. "Would you help move Fulcher over to the pyre they're building?"

Grimly, Owen nodded, and together he and Dom carried Fulcher over to the pile of Tortallan corpses that were awaiting cremation.

"I'm not looking forward to having to select a new corporal or having green soldiers in my squad," panted Dom, as they put down Fulcher, who already seemed to weigh twice what he had in life.

"If Lord Raoul disembowels you, you won't have to worry about that," Owen commented, as they stepped away from the Tortallan dead.

"Good point." Dom nodded thoughtfully. "I never thought I'd say this, but disembowelment has its advantages."

A wild chuckle climbed up Owen's throat, and, before he could stifle it, burst out of his mouth. Glancing at him, Dom's face split into a wide grin. Then, a second later, before either of them could figure out how it happened, they were both laughing hysterically in frantic whoops that were not so much about amusement as about anger, loss, and frustration.

However, they sobered immediately when two convicts emerged from the castle bearing Kel. Along with the other alive Tortallans, they clustered around Neal as he examined her, making impatient tutting noises to himself like a boiling pot. Relief swept through Owen's being like a tidal wave when he heard Neal pronounce, "Don't go pulling out any more of your hair, everyone. She's just unconscious. She'll wake up soon, and, when she does, I'll have to explain to her what a real bandage looks like."

With that, he shooed them off, and Owen had just left when five convicts emerged from the castle carrying the corpses of Stenmun and Blayce. At the sight of these dead bodies created by Kel, everybody clapped, pounded their neighbors' backs, or hugged one another.

The crowd surged around the convicts as they dumped Blayce and Stenmun on the ground with a thud. Then, the throng took turns kicking and spitting on the two monstrous men who had finally been destroyed.

Finally, Owen got a chance to approach Stenmun and Blayce. Remembering all the soldiers who had been slain by the killing devices, all the children whose souls had been used to make them, Happy, Lofren, and Fulcher, he spat as much salvia as would fit in his mouth upon first Blayce and then Stenmun.

He didn't think that this completely expressed the extreme contempt he held Blayce and Stenmun in, but there were hordes of people waiting behind him, and he didn't want to deprive them of their opportunity to demonstrate their scorn for Blayce and Stenmun.

Not long after Owen stepped away, a perfect soprano voice broke out in song. Impressed by the voice's sheer beauty, Owen looked around for the source of it, and felt his eyes widen when he realized that the music was emerging from Tobe's lips. He wasn't the only one who was awed, clearly, for suddenly it seemed like nobody was speaking or moving, as everybody was enthralled by Tobe's singing.

Feeling simultaneously as though he was inside and above his body, Owen allowed the music to flow through him, lowering him to its depths, throwing him to its peaks, and refreshing him like a week's worth of sleep. He listened as Tobe managed to weave a traditional Tortallan funeral dirge into both a tribute to the heroism of the Tortallans who had perished and a condemnation of the villainy of Blayce and his henchmen.

After what could have been a century but seemed like only a moment, Tobe reached the conclusion of the song. When the last clear note shivered away on the wings of the wind, the silence was nearly absolute. Then, a storm of applause and whistling rang out.

"That boy has powerful lungs all right," grunted Nat, who had a black eye and who had been standing beside Owen without his noticing. "He oughta be a Player."

"Maybe he will be when his indenture is up, and when this war is over," Owen said, hoping this would be the case. A voice like Tobe's needed to be heard not only for the young man's sake, but for all of Tortall's benefit.

"I hope so," murmured Nat. "A lad like him should be beltin' lyrics out at court, not squanderin' his talent among us riffraff."

"He'd be wasting his talents at court," argued Owen. "Most nobles wouldn't be able to appreciate that song properly."

"I thought that nobles were supposed to be cultured." Nat arched an eyebrow.

"Most are, but cultured isn't the same as experienced." Owen shrugged. "It requires experience that song. You need to understand sacrifice, death, loss, and heroism firsthand to comprehend it. If you don't, no matter how cultured you are, all you'll ever hear is just a pretty voice. Tobe deserves an audience that will really be touched by how he sings, instead of merely amazed by his lungs alone."


	35. Chapter 35

Author's Note: This chapter turned out to be quite a bit longer than I expected. Sorry about that, people, but it seemed shorter in my head than it was when I typed it up.

Happy Memorial Day to all Americans. I hope you all enjoy your three day weekend.

Home Again

Five days later, Owen clambered onto the smugglers' ferry with Kel, Jump, an ornery Peachblossom, Neal, Dom, and Tobe. As he did so, he tried not to think about how Happy had hated crossing the tumultuous Vassa. Happy's absence was still a raw wound that it was best not to rub up against with old memories for fear of painful abrasion. Later, when the mere thought of his faithful steed didn't cause his heart to clench in agony, he would revisit them.

Now, all he wanted to do was stare at the frigid water churning about the boat as he leaned against the railing. The rapids made his stomach perform an astonishing array of acrobatic feats, but that was just as well. Being on the cusp of vomiting up his last meal did wonders to take his mind off the gaping hole Happy had left in his heart.

Of course, the water might not have deserved all the credit for his nausea, because the welcoming committee that was coming into view as they crossed the river was enough to make his stomach contort like his intestines. Swallowing the bile that was rising in his throat, he strove to convince himself that he couldn't see the welcoming committee assembled on the far side of the Vassa, and that Lord Wyldon certainly wasn't awaiting them.

However, this venture was far more of a failure than he would have liked, since he was as horrid at lying to himself as he was at telling falsehoods to others. The sight of Wyldon's ever growing figure emphasized how close he and his companions were to receiving judgment for their unauthorized Scanran jaunt, which wasn't a comforting notion, especially because he could already feel the cool shadow of the executioner's ax hovering over him.

When it came down to it, Owen of Jesslaw was dead now; he just needed a formal sentence to make it official for the clerks, and a decapitation to stop him from walking around and committing treason again. The dark flippancy of this idea appalled him, and he realized that the pressure of impending judgment combined with the action and the grief of the past few days had made him hysterical.

Maybe he would be one of those people who laughed as they were led to the gallows, not because they were evil and not because they didn't comprehend what was about to happen to them, but because they knew all too well that they were about to be killed and couldn't bear to think about it. Well, he supposed that it was better to die laughing than to die crying…

As the figures on the Tortallan side of the river quickly approached their normal heights, Owen recognized that he really should be praying right now. He should be appealing to Mithros for a merciful decision on Wyldon's part—one that would allow him to escape from this situation with his neck intact. However, even in his mind, he couldn't find the words necessary to do so, and, as a result, he gave the endeavor up as futile. Besides, he reminded himself with that frantic hysterical tinge, if Mithros was so wise and powerful, surely the god could discern what Owen wanted without him having to phrase it in words.

After that, there was no time for quiet prayer, for the ferry had hit the rocky bank of the Vassa. His knees feeling as though they were stones, Owen climbed off the boat with the others, and, along with Kel and Neal, knelt before Lord Wyldon. Ducking his head and trying desperately not to think about how much of his fate hinged on the coming moments, he found himself comparing himself, Kel, and Neal to dogs showing their submission to the alpha male by not meeting his eyes.

While Owen was wildly battling to keep his mounting hysteria at bay, Lord Raoul had led Dom's squad away and Duke Baird had taken charge of the refugees. That was good, since it meant that only Esmond, Merric, and Seaver were around to hear Lord Wyldon pass judgment on Owen, Kel, and Neal. At the moment, Owen was in the mood to appreciate any privacy he could get. That would make this terrible affair a little easier to bear, at least.

The downside of the departure of so many people was that the most pregnant silence that Owen had ever endured ensued. At the best of times, he hated long pauses in conversations, because they were uncomfortable in-between-places in which one could get lost all too quickly in one's thoughts or emotions. However, this quiet was about twelve times worse than anything he had ever heard. On his right, he could feel Kel and Neal beside him. Normally, he would have been able to hear their breathing, but he couldn't now, probably because the two of them were afraid to exhale or inhale for fear that it would tilt the scales in Wyldon's head. Owen could sympathize, since, at the present, his heart seemed to be refusing to beat.

When he could tolerate the dreadful silence no more, and when even hearing that he would be drawn and quartered for treason would have been preferable to this unbearable uncertainty he was wavering about in like a hapless leaf in a windstorm, he burst out, fully aware that he should have waited for Wyldon to speak first, "My lord, I'm sorry, but I got Happy killed. I didn't mean to—he fought as hard as any knight—but he got killed anyway, and I never wanted that."

Blast it, he was babbling, and pointless chatter peeved Lord Wyldon. Worse still, tears were streaming down his face. Mentioning Happy was enough to utterly shatter any composure he otherwise might have been able to maintain while waiting for his fate to be determined. If there was one thing Wyldon hated more than babbling, it was tears.

Still, Owen couldn't prevent them from streaming down his face. No matter what, he felt like Happy's death was his fault, and, he was convinced that by getting the horse killed, he had not only failed Happy, but had failed Lord Wyldon, who had supplied him with Happy. Both Happy and Wyldon had trusted him, and he had betrayed them. As far as he was concerned, that was more than enough reason to cry.

He also didn't think that it mitigated his crime very much that he had never wanted to get Happy killed. After all, he hadn't ever wanted to betray his country or Lord Wyldon, and he had done just that. He had never wished to desert, but he had done that. When it came down to it, he wasn't malicious; he was incompetent. Unfortunately, the only difference between being evil and being incompetent, he was learning, was that an evil person intentionally caused others anguish, whereas an incompetent one managed to do so by accident.

Of course, incompetency was never a very good defense, particularly when dealing with Lord Wyldon. However, at the moment, Owen couldn't really devise a better one. Yet, that didn't matter too much, since he wasn't sure after all the mistakes that he had made if he deserved mercy. No, he probably deserved to be punished. It would be enough if people knew that he was a pathetic, blundering individual, rather than a cruel one who derived pleasure from the suffering of others.

"Is that all you have to say to me, that your horse is dead?" Lord Wyldon demanded in a voice cold enough to refreeze the Vassa, and Owen cringed. He had forgotten just how frigid the man could make his tone, not to mention how dispassionate, for Wyldon sounded as though he was commenting on mess hall food rather than passing judgment on traitors.

For a second, Owen wondered inwardly whether the cold voice was a sign of ire or a lack of it, and, therefore, if it should be constituted as an ill or auspicious omen. Then, the full impact of Wyldon's words hit him in the face, and, if he could have kicked himself in this position, he would have done so. Obviously, Wyldon didn't want to hear about Happy.

No, Lord Wyldon expected him to address his disobedience and his betrayal. He expected an apology of some sort. Numbly, Owen thought that not only would a proper squire have waited until Lord Wyldon spoke until saying anything, but they would also have discussed those issues before mentioning their dead horse. Then again, he had never been a proper squire. If he had been, he wouldn't be kneeling before his knightmaster like this right now.

With a sinking sensation, he noted that his impropriety was probably about to land him in the worst cesspit of his life—one that he might very well never emerge from. Of course, his tongue had done its fair share in dragging him here. Honestly, why did he have no control over it? Why did he always end up spilling out exactly what was in his heart? Why couldn't he run the words by his brain for some speedy revision first?

Calling himself nine types of idiot for letting his tongue lead him into another quagmire, he bowed his head again, because if he could not stop the tears from pouring down his cheeks at least he could hide them.

"No, my lord," he said quietly. "I disobeyed you. I betrayed you."

Since he could not bear to be less than entirely honest with Lord Wyldon after all he had already done to destroy their relationship and the bond of trust that should have existed between them, he added, "And I'd do it again, under the circumstances, not meaning any disrespect, sir, but I miss Happy."

He knew fully well that he was probably digging himself a deeper grave. He was perfectly aware that he sounded insolent and unrepentant. He couldn't help it, though. The world would end before he admitted that he was wrong to follow Kel, rescue the refugees, and do his part in destroying Blayce and Stenmun.

Doubtlessly, the vast majority of Tortallans would declare that he had been wrong to turn his back on his duty to his country and Lord Wyldon, but their opinions didn't matter, because they didn't understand how much more useful he had been behind enemy lines than in front of them. No matter what others thought and no matter how severe the consequences, Owen was certain that he had behaved properly. Sometimes it was enough to know that you were correct, and everyone else was wrong, even if you were facing beheading at best, and drawing and quartering at worst.

Yes, Owen was sorry that he had to break the bond and the trust that had developed between him and his knightmaster. He was sorry that he would never get to be a knight now. He didn't look forward to being executed for treason, either, nor was he delighted that his family would have to deal with the stigma of having a traitor in their ranks like the Tirragens and the Eldorones. Still, he had learned over the years that doing the right thing didn't always feel good, and that oftentimes tasks that needed to be accomplished were painful to do.

Helping Kel save her refugees and dispose of Blayce and Stenmun was worth sacrificing his good name, his dreams, and his life for. His life and ambitions were not more important than the lives of the refugees, and they undeniably did not outweigh the lives that would have been wrecked if Blayce had continued to manufacture his killing machines. This he was certain of because he had learned about self-sacrifice and the ends justifying the means from Lord Wyldon.

Besides, it wasn't as though losing his good name was the same as being deprived of his honor. Before he had believed it was, but now he realized that it was not. A good name was merely a label that others put on you based on your reputation, but it wasn't an adequate judge of character, because it could be besmirched by petty, untrue gossip, and by not dressing fashionably enough for banquets. Honor was of a far more exalted nature, for it was internal and could never be stolen from you. It emerged from the confidence that to the best of your ability you had acted righteously in the situations you had been placed in. If you possessed this inner certainty, then when you had to account for your earthly deeds before the Black God in his court, you would have no cause to be ashamed.

Despite these thoughts, Owen anticipated a reprimand or another chilly inquiry from Lord Wyldon. However, instead, the man asked in a voice that was shockingly mild considering he was directing his words to Neal, "And you, Sir Nealan, have you any comments?"

"No, my lord," Neal replied, unnaturally subdued, and Owen thought that Neal knew that the more that he said to Lord Wyldon, the more his odds of vexing their former training master increased exponentially. It was just as well that he had, since Owen had put his foot in his mouth often enough for them both.

"I believe, Owen, that you are familiar with my dislike of needless dramatics," Lord Wyldon announced, returning his focus to Owen, who registered the use of his first name with some relief. Throughout his years of training with Wyldon, he had noticed that the man didn't employ the first names of those under his command when he was furious at them—quite the opposite, in fact. Wyldon reserved first names for his more tender moments, and surnames were for his more detached dealings with others.

Still, he thought that a major problem in this instance was that he and Wyldon had very different definitions of "needless dramatics." In Owen's opinion, it was acceptable to cry when you had gotten your horse killed, you were facing execution for treason, and you had been forced to choose which of two beings you greatly respected you would betray. However, in Wyldon's, it was plainly poor form. Sadly, it was Wyldon's perspective that mattered here, as it often was, he thought, as Wyldon went on, "I am not about to declare you a traitor because the mount I gave you was killed in battle."

When he heard these words, Owen was positive that some intoxicant had been inserted into his veins, as it dawned on him that Lord Wyldon wasn't going to declare him a traitor, and that probably meant that Kel and Neal were safe, too. They weren't going to have their heads chopped off. He could feel tears of relief burning in his eyes, but somehow he mustered the discipline to restrain them from streaking down his cheek. He was sure that crying in relief would be regarded as "needless dramatics." As such, he should probably celebrate the continued survival of his head and body as a single entity by employing his head more frequently…

"He did what he was trained to do," Lord Wyldon continued, and the adrenaline that had throbbed through Owen's veins while he anxiously awaited his sentence ebbed, leaving him dazed, adrift, and hollow. This couldn't be happening. Lord Wyldon couldn't be pardoning him this simply. It was all too anticlimactic after the chaos of the past couple of days. "I am sad for the loss of the horse—he was one of the best I've raised—but I would be sorrier still for the loss of a squire in whom I can take pride."

"Sir?" Owen gawked at him, convinced that one of them had gone crazy, and since Kel and Neal had both said the same thing in the same baffled tone, that seemed to indicate that it wasn't, oddly enough, him.

No, his ears must not have played a vicious practical joke on him, after all. Truly, he must have been the recipient of a typical Lord Wyldon compliment—rare, earned fifty times over, oblique, offhanded, never effusive, and utterly unexpected. Oh, and Mithros, had that one been unexpected. Not only had Owen been anticipating a tongue-lashing that would put every other lecture he had received to shame, but Lord Wyldon had never praised him so highly. Besides, it was hard to imagine how Wyldon could possibly be proud of him after he had betrayed the man.

Indeed, he had envisioned that the man would be disappointed him, and he had tried to brace himself for the crushing blow of it. Now, he recognized dimly that such a preparation had been for nothing, for Wyldon wasn't ashamed of him—he was proud. All that made him feel as disoriented as if an earthquake had just occurred beneath his feet, as once again it was driven into his skull that he did not know his knightmaster half as well as he thought he did, and that every time he thought he comprehended the man, another layer would peel back, revealing him in an astonishing new light.

He was really a very frustrating man to be squire to, Owen noted inwardly. At the thought, a wild glee deluged him, as it really hit him that he was still a squire. That meant that he could become a knight, after all. Never had the notion buoyed him so much.

Still feeling as if the world as he understood it had flipped upside down and that objects were continuing to fall on his head, he could not listen to the conversation properly again until he heard Kel protesting Wyldon's decision to let her off. Luckily, Neal was there to plant a hand firmly over her lips, hiss something in her ear, and inform Lord Wyldon in a falsely earnest voice, "She took a blow to the head, I think. It leads her to say odd things. She needs a stay in the infirmary, just until she comes to her senses."

"It appalls me to say this, but for the first time I find myself in agreement with Sir Nealan," sighed Lord Wyldon, fiddling with his sword belt in a sure sign of his annoyance at having to agree with Neal about anything. As if determined to salvage as much as he could from the situation, he warned Neal sternly, "Do not let it go to your head."

Perhaps Neal was too busy keeping his palm clamped over Kel's mouth, or maybe he was too appreciative of Wyldon's choice to let them go free to display his usual snarkiness. Either way, he made no retort, and, for a moment, silence fell over their group again, although it was noticeably less tense than the previous one had been.

This time, it was Lord Wyldon who broke the quiet by telling Owen and Neal, "I would like a moment alone with the lady knight. Go with your friends."

It was a clear dismissal, and Owen knew that he and Neal should have disappeared with Merric, Seaver, and Esmond. However, he couldn't bring himself to comply with this order, and, judging by how slowly Neal removed his hand from Kel's lips, he wasn't too pleased about leaving, either.

That settled it, then. Owen couldn't leave Kel alone now any more than he could have allowed her to travel after her refugees alone. He knew perfectly well that when Wyldon wanted to speak to someone privately, he was planning on ripping them to shreds with a lecture. It didn't matter to Owen that fifteen minutes ago he had believed they were all going to be declared traitors, and that by comparison, any lecture, no matter how severe, looked like a slap on the wrist. Kel didn't deserve to be yelled at when she had single-handedly killed Blayce and Stenmun. She was right, and she shouldn't be told that she was wrong. That would be unfair, and over the years, Kel had received more than enough unjust criticism from Lord Wyldon, who, for all his insistence that women were more delicate than men, always seemed to demand five times as much from her than he did from any male.

Well, that wasn't going to happen this time, because Owen wasn't going to let it. Truthfully, he wasn't sure how he was going to prevent it, but he was.

"You aren't going to yell at her, are you, sir?" he demanded of Lord Wyldon, even though he suspected that he already knew the answer. "Because you can't."

"I beg your pardon?" Lord Wyldon arched his eyebrows inquisitively, but Owen could tell from the wintry tone that the man had heard him just fine. It wasn't even that his knightmaster was taken aback by Owen's words, although he had every right to be, since few people had the nerve to define what Lord Wyldon could or could not do, and squires didn't tell their knights what to do, anyway. No, the question wasn't just an expression of astonishment; it was meant to intimidate Owen. He was supposed to be terrified enough by that icy voice to duck his head apologetically and flee. In short, he was supposed to be scared enough by that tone not to care whether Wyldon was right or wrong.

As much as Owen loathed to confess it, even to himself, such a tactic normally would have worked. After all, he had been afraid of Lord Wyldon ever since his first day as a page. To this day, Wyldon could still intimidate him more than any Scanran could. He had never found this as shameful as he probably should have, because he knew that soldiers and knights twice his age were intimidated by Wyldon's austere manner and warrior prowess. If they were scared, he was smart to be wary, he had always told himself.

Now, though, he realized that was wrong. His fear was something to be ashamed of if it permitted him to stand back and let something he knew was wrong happen, all because he was too much of a coward to speak out against it strongly enough. If he allowed that to occur, he would be nothing more than a sheep, albeit one that occasionally bleated an ineffectual, half-hearted protest at its owner.

"She doesn't deserve to be yelled at," he argued, still somewhat amazed by his own audacity, but he knew that he was right to be bold. Wyldon was often correct, but he wasn't always, and this was one of the few times that he was wrong. His face pale and taut with determination, he met Wyldon's eyes resolutely, so that the man would realize that he was not about to back down. He would not allow the moment to pass. Somehow, he would grab onto it, extend it, and bend it to his will. Somehow, he would obtain what he wanted. "Not after losing so many people, and killing Blayce, and being wounded, and keeping us alive."

For a moment that seemed to contain an eternity in which Owen's lungs refused to breathe and his heart couldn't be persuaded to beat, his gray eyes warred with Wyldon's hard brown ones. Then, his knightmaster appeared to fully grasp that this time Owen wasn't going to surrender soon, for he fingered the scar the hurrock had left on his temple, and sighed, "I do not intend to yell at her. _Now _will you go away?"

Feeling that something indefinable but important had shifted in their relationship now that he had actually won a clash with Lord Wyldon, Owen helped Neal drag Kel to her feet. Then, he and Neal walked away with Merric, Seaver, and Esmond.

While he waited with the others for Wyldon to finish speaking with Kel so that they could ride back to Fort Mastiff, Owen kept his eyes on them as best he could, making sure that Wyldon really wasn't berating Kel. He was so focused on doing that, he didn't hear a word of Merric, Seaver, or Esmond's account of how they had returned home safely with the adult refugees who had not accompanied Kel to Blayce's fortress.

At last, Lord Wyldon concluded his discussion with Kel, and they began the ride back to Fort Mastiff. Hoping to take his mind off the fact that he was riding the dim but good-natured mare, Marigold, that he had been using ever since Happy had died, Owen listened to Merric describe how the Tortallans had thrashed one of Maggur's armies, and how the killing devices at Frasrland and the City of the Gods had collapsed. Then, even though he had been there, he listened to Neal recount their experiences in Scanra since Merric, Seaver, and Esmond left them.

When they had finished exchanging news and stories, they were almost at Mastiff, and Owen asked Kel, figuring that it might be his last chance in awhile to do so, "What did Lord Wyldon want with you, anyway, if he didn't want to yell at you?"

"He just wanted to give me my next assignment," Kel answered. "He expects me to find ground for a refugee camp, build it, and run it."

"Something about all this feels very familiar," drawled Neal. "I can't put my finger on it, though. I must be going senile."

"If you were half as hilarious as you think you are, you'd be twice as funny as you really are." Kel glared at him, as they rode into Fort Mastiff, and Owen thought with a grin that he was back to his home away from home.

"If I were funny, I couldn't devote my whole self to being obnoxious," Neal volleyed back.

After that, in the flurry of unsaddling and feeding their mounts, there wasn't much time for talking. Once they had finished tending to the horses, they parted paths to unpack with Kel and Neal disappearing into the officer's quarters where they would be staying, and Owen returning to his bedroom.

As he walked across the fort's courtyard to the building where his room was, Owen found himself surrounded by a pack of Lord Wyldon's hunting dogs, all wagging their tails and licking him enthusiastically.

"It's hard to believe that I was once scared of all of you," remarked Owen, rubbing two dogs on the head as they lapped at his wrists. In fact, seeing the dogs' affectionate greeting which made it clear that that they had missed him, he had trouble imagining them growling at him as they had when Wyldon had first introduced them to him. Plainly, the dogs had come to love him for the way he petted them, fed them, and cleaned up after them. For his part, Owen had come to enjoy caring for them almost as much as he had Happy, and, since he could never tend to Happy again, he was content to lavish all of his attention on Wyldon's dogs.

"You must smell Scanra on me," he laughed, as a dog's tongue tickled his face. "Don't worry. If you keep that up, I'll smell like you soon. That's what you want, isn't it?"

For a few more moments, he scratched the dogs behind their ears and rubbed their bellies. Then, he remembered that he had duties to attend to, and, regretfully, he pushed himself to his feet and went up to his room to unpack.

He was halfway through transferring the clean clothes from his satchel into his dresser and the dirty ones into a basket to carry down to the washerwomen when a knock sounded on his door.

"Come in," he called, too busy tossing a dirty shirt into the basket to bother getting up and walking over to the door in order to answer it.

A second later, his door swung open, revealing Lord Wyldon. Reflexively, Owen stood up, wishing that Walden had chosen to visit him, instead. Walden probably would have been glad to see him, but Wyldon most likely wanted to discuss his desertion in greater detail, not to mention his contradicting Wyldon in public and trying to tell the man what he could and could not do. Not being a complete moron, Owen couldn't envision this exchange as a pleasant one.

"Sit, Squire." Lord Wyldon crossed the room, settled himself on Owen's bed, and gestured for his squire to do the same. Too grateful that at least he wouldn't have to stand through what promised to be a lengthy conversation to find it odd to be commanded to sit on his own bed, Owen complied. "I want to talk to you."

"Lecture me you mean, sir," Owen observed glumly. He wasn't stupid. He knew that whenever an authority figure announced that they wished to speak with you instead of just doing so, it was an ominous omen.

"I mean exactly what I say." Wyldon shot him a piercing glance. "I seem to recall you were far more daring in your defense of Mindelan earlier."

"It's less difficult to be brave for someone else than to be brave for yourself, my lord," muttered Owen, yanking on a loose strand of his quilt. Then, before he could halt himself, he poured out all the fear whirling about inside him, filling him with guilt at his own cowardice. "Anyway, I was plenty scared then, too. I―I've been intimidated by you ever since my first day as a page, and I was afraid even before I left Tortall that you would declare me a traitor. I was scared that I was going to be executed, and I don't want to die yet―especially not like that. I'm really nothing more than a coward."

"A coward?" Lord Wyldon echoed, arching his eyebrows. "Do you know how many battle-hardened veterans fall instantly silent if I glare at them? Do you realize that just about everyone in the country fears execution?"

"That they are cowards as well doesn't make me any less of one, my lord." Miserably, Owen shook his head.

"Actually, it does," responded Wyldon as brusquely as ever. "Much as a fool is someone who is far less intelligent than the average person, a coward is a being who is noticeably less valiant. I daresay that doesn't apply to you."

"If you say so, sir." Owen still thought that meant he was merely another coward in a world loaded with them, but he wasn't going to argue the point further. Already, he could feel a headache coming on from all of the day's stress.

"Think about it, Owen," Wyldon ordered shortly, sensing his squire's dubiousness. "Fear is natural. It's a gift to us from the gods to increase our chances of survival by warning us when we are in perilous situations. Only a fool isn't afraid in life-threatening situations, and that's stupidity, not bravery. To be truly brave, you have to be scared, move past that, and do what you know is right no matter how difficult the obstacles. Courage is being afraid but conquering that fear enough to do your duty. That's why only a brave person would ever venture to Scanra like you did, or argue with me like you did earlier."

"Yes, sir." Owen nodded swiftly, even though he didn't fully understand what he was agreeing to. It just seemed like Wyldon wasn't angry about his earlier behavior, and he was more than willing to do what he had to do to keep it that way.

Here, Wyldon paused to scrutinize his squire, and Owen felt as if the man could see into the depths of his soul―could view every careless blunder, every act of charity, every fit of rage, every petty action, and every selfless deed. The sensation was a disconcerting one, especially since Wyldon appeared to be evaluating him, and Owen, as usual, had the nasty suspicion that he would fail to meet his knightmaster's exacting standards.

Finally, Lord Wyldon broke the silence with a completely unexpected question. "Shall I let you in on a secret, Squire?"

"Yes, sir." Owen nodded eagerly, excited because Wyldon had never entrusted him with a secret before.

"The truth is that people are supposed to be afraid of execution, and they are supposed to be at least mildly intimidated by those who wield authority over them," explained Wyldon bluntly. "Execution wouldn't be an effective threat or deterrent if it didn't terrify people, and leaders who lack the capacity to lay down the law invite mayhem. Punishment is meant to encourage people to tow the line. That means that there are two types of people who break the rules: those who do so because it brings them pleasure to be on the wrong side of the law, and those who do so because they have decided that something else is more important than the rules. The first group needs to be punished if only to impart on everyone else that the rules can't be broken at whim. The second group it is pointless to punish, because they have transcended the punishment, and everybody can see that. Punishing them merely turns them into martyrs and inspires more defiance in the end."

"Are you saying the second group is bad, my lord?" Owen frowned, since he thought that, because he had escaped punishment earlier that probably placed him in the latter category.

"Bad? No, I should say not. Those beings tend to force morality on the world, and that is very necessary. They are difficult to have under your command sometimes because they are not like the common criminal, but such people tend to be extremely rare. Most people aren't willing to risk their necks to disobey an order they think is wrong. Most people never rock the boat for fear of toppling out."

"Most beings are cowards, then," Owen scowled. "They let fear of being punished dictate their whole lives."

"Perhaps, or maybe they just have faith in those above them." Wyldon shrugged. "Perhaps they just believe that their commanders have more knowledge than they do, and, therefore, that following orders they think are wrong is the right thing to do."

"Then you can't tell whether or not someone is a coward by their actions alone, sir?" Owen's forehead furrowed. He wasn't sure he liked that idea. He liked things to be straightforward with people either being heroes or villains, and either brave or cowardly.

"I'm afraid so." Lord Wyldon nodded. "To be a true coward, someone has to allow his fear to force him to do something that he knows is immoral. Determining whether people are afraid can sometimes be difficult, since people can mask their fear well. For instance, I was scared the whole time you and your companions were in Scanra."

"You were scared, my lord?" Owen gasped, gaping at Lord Wyldon.

"Of course I was," replied Wyldon dryly. "I was worried that one careless decision on my part was going to cost the realm the future commander it had in Keladry. I was afraid that Queenscove would get himself killed, and, despite his chronically bad attitude and his endless impertinence, it would be a shame to lose his healing abilities and his sword. Then, of course, I was scared that I would lose you. I wasn't just afraid of losing the time and energy I poured into your training― I was scared that I would lose _you_."

His cheeks flaming, Owen stared at his quilt, as though hoping it would show him the path to salvation. Lord Wyldon so rarely spoke like this that it always ended up making him uncomfortable, and hearing how much he had worried his knightmaster made him feel more guilty about running off to Scanra with Kel than any lecture could have.

"I'm sorry I distressed you, sir," he whispered, thinking that the words sounded lame even to him. "I didn't mean to do it. It just happened."

"And I didn't mean to upset you." His fingers surprisingly gentle, Wyldon lifted Owen's chin, so that Owen had no choice but to gaze into his unusually soft brown eyes. "I just thought that you deserved to know that I was only hard on you because I cared."

"I know." Owen did know this, but it was still oddly comforting to hear his knightmaster confirm this. "I realize that I'm a difficult student, too."

"You are indeed." Wyldon rubbed his arm that had been injured by a hurrock, as he often did when he was figuring out what he wanted to say next. "You're frightfully headstrong, and headstrong pupils are always a challenge. With them, you are faced with the nearly impossible task of teaching them how to obey orders while also not completely crushing their spirits, because it is often the scrappy ones that turn out the best in the long run. Of course, perhaps I have no business complaining since I am sure that my headstrong nature gave my knightmaster a fair amount of headaches."

"I can't imagine you as a squire, my lord." Convinced that if he had to deal with any more revelations today his brain would explode, Owen shook his head numbly. Also, given the number of times he had to widen his eyes recently, it would be a miracle if they ever returned to their normal diameter.

"Well, I wasn't born a knight," snorted Wyldon. As he established as much, he reached into his pocket and withdrew a letter, which he thrust into Owen's hands. "This arrived for you three days after you left."

Looking at Margarry's handwriting which he had feared that he would never see again, Owen couldn't wait for Lord Wyldon to leave, so that he could tear open the envelope and read the note as quickly as possible.

"I'll leave you now," announced Wyldon, striding over to the door. "You should finish unpacking, clean yourself, put some food in your stomach, and get some sleep. You look like you haven't gotten any for a week."

"Yes, sir," Owen responded automatically, but he knew that he would relegate reading Margarry's letter to the top of his priority list.


	36. Chapter 36

Halves and Wholes

As soon as Owen was convinced that Lord Wyldon was a safe distance away, he slit open the envelope, and, his fingers trembling, unfolded the parchment to read:

_My dear Owen, _

_I received the note that you wrote me shortly after I sent one to you informing you that by the grace of the Goddess I had managed to escape the siege around the City of the Gods. Firstly, I wish to apologize, although I know that no words will compensate for it, for my delayed response. In case you are wondering if I got stupider since you saw me last, I will tell you that I am perfectly aware that I could have blamed the tardy answer on the muddy and rocky roads north as well as on the havoc that war can wreck on communication networks. Indeed, perhaps I should do so, since a proper maiden would probably seize the opportunity to blame her folly on the fickleness of the roads, instead of having to admit that she was anything less than responsible and punctual. However, as you have been so honest with me, I think lying a poor manner in which to return the favor, and I can only hope that you won't regard me any the lesser for being frank with you. Of course, even if you hadn't been so forthcoming with me, I would still want to tell you the truth, I confess, because I am convinced that lies are an unstable foundation for any relationship. Even if you never discover my falsehood, it is the lying itself that is wrong, and so I won't do it with you, and pray that you'll never do it to me. _

_Now that I have apologized for my shameful lack of correspondence with all the humility that I can muster (which, admittedly, isn't much, but is better than none), I will attempt to explain, but not excuse, my actions. The truth is that when I got your letter declaring your love for me, I panicked. I had been presumptuous and immodest enough to think that you harbored a genuine sense of affection and attraction to me that rivaled my feelings for you. However, you had never expressed your feelings for me so strongly or so openly, and, I admit, that for some crazy reason my heart believed that we would continue to flirt and beat around the bush with each other until we were too senile to do so. _

_Your letter threw your heart out into the open, and, by extension, it did the same thing to mine. When I read it, I couldn't breathe, and I came the closest I ever came to fainting in my whole life. I felt like my stays were laced too tightly, but they weren't done up any more tightly than usual when I checked. I felt hot and flushed, but I didn't have a fever and I hadn't exerted myself greatly with a long horse ride that morning. I felt like my bones were melted candlewax, and I was convinced that my stomach had dropped to the floor. _

_I asked myself as I folded up your note with clumsy fingers why I had reacted that way, and I realized that it was because I returned your feelings. I loved you, too. I loved you, and I always would, no matter what you did. _

Reading her letter, Owen felt like he was in danger of fainting himself. He felt as though there was a raging fever in his blood, and that fever was Margarry. He was more elated than he had ever been—happier than he had been when he defeated the bandits as a page, happier than when Wyldon had accepted him as his squire, happier than when Blayce and Stenmun had been killed, and happier even than when he had discovered that he would not meet a traitor's miserable end, after all. His euphoria sprang from a single, shining source: Margarry.

Joy was such a simple thing. His uncontrollable elation originated from the knowledge that his love for her was reciprocated. She had said she loved him, and she always would. That thought alone would be enough to keep him fighting long after his muscles had failed him.

Once he had wiped the tears of joy from his eyes enough that he could make out the words on the parchment clutched in his hand, he continued to read:

_The honorable thing, of course, would have been to write back to you promptly upon reading your letter to tell you that your feelings were returned, and, even if they weren't, it would have been the charitable thing to inform you of that as gently and as quickly as possible. I knew that then, and I know that now, but I didn't do it. _

_I didn't do it, because I was an emotional, cowardly young lady. I was terrified of the depth of your emotions and of mine. After what happened to Anwen, I've always been mistrustful of any men who weren't my father (which is a vast majority of men), and ever since I was little, I've always sworn to myself that I wouldn't fall in love with anyone. I didn't desire to give anyone power over me, and that's what falling in love with somebody would do. I didn't want to rely on anybody else for my happiness. I wanted to be utterly self-reliant and independent. _

_Worse than that, I've always told myself that if I had to fall in love I would do it with a scholar, and not a knight—never a knight. Ever since I was knee-high to a grasshopper, I've watched Mother say farewell to Father so that he could fight his wars to protect this realm, and I've seen how it rips her heart apart every time he leaves. I've seen how she forces him to leave even when she wants nothing more than for him to stay, because she knows that he has a drive to forever be rescuing people and that he can never just sit back while others are in danger. He always needs to be moving, but he also has to know that he hasn't abandoned her, and so Mother has to pretend for his sake that she wants him out doing those perilous knightly things. _

_I've watched her cry with worry for him. I've seen her flinch when he jousts at tournaments even as she cheers him on. I know that, even though he was miserable being training master, she was glad that he was, because that meant that he would be safe, and I know that she was nervous when he went back to the front lines after resigning. _

_To love a knight, or to love the only kind of knight worth loving, demands more strength and courage than I thought I had in me. I was convinced, therefore, that my loving you would hurt both of us in the long run. I thought that I could never find it in my heart to let you go the way Mother lets Father go, and I know that you would need me to do that, or else you would be forced to pick between adventures and me, and you could never be happy in such a state. I was certain that if I denied the love that existed between us, we would both be the better for it. Yet, even when I was thus convinced, I couldn't force myself to scoop up a quill and write you a note that I knew would break your heart. Even when I thought that we would never make a good couple, I couldn't bully myself into lying to you about how much I loved you. My fingers recognized that in doing so they would be denying not only an essential element of myself, but an integral component of you, and they couldn't perform such a dreadful betrayal. _

_As a result, I didn't write anything, and I am only writing now, because I have realized how wrong I was. I was silly to think that the strength and the courage to let a loved one go came before the love; the strength and the courage are a product of the love. I was a fool to think that I could control who I fell in love with when the whole point of falling in love with someone is that it is something magical that is beyond our power to dictate or even comprehend. I was an idiot to believe that love dies just because we stubbornly refuse to acknowledge it. I was a moron not to understand that all ignoring it does is kill a part of ourselves, and neither you nor I should have to do that to ourselves, Owen. _

_Moreover, I was wrong to think that I could not fall in love with a knight. I would have to fall in love with a knight. There is no way I could love a man unless I knew that he was as brave, as determined, as self-sacrificing, as honest, and as utterly unreasonable as Father is, and it is my good fortune that I found someone who was all that without the stiffness. _

His eyes widening, Owen stared blankly at this last paragraph, convinced he had misread it. He and Wyldon were nothing alike, and he could imagine that his knightmaster would turn a furious shade of crimson if he ever heard such a comparison.

It wasn't that he didn't want to be like Wyldon, Owen observed fairly. When it came down to it, for all his gruffness, Wyldon was a better man than most, and he was certainly one of the beings that Owen admired most. Still, no matter how much he respected Wyldon, he knew that he wasn't like the man and he never would be.

Owen was a free spirit; Wyldon was rigid. Owen had a tendency to break the rules, whereas Wyldon tended to follow them to the letter and often did the enforcing of them. Owen was constantly putting his foot in his mouth, and Wyldon never seemed to speak without weighing every word first. Owen hated etiquette; Wyldon stood on ceremony. Owen wore his heart on his sleeve, and, in contrast, Wyldon moved through life with a perpetually blank face. Owen found it hard to speak without pouring out his emotions, whereas conversations that involved feelings seemed to be one of the few things that made Wyldon uncomfortable. No, all in all, he and Wyldon were very different people, and that had been the root of many of his problems as a squire, while Wyldon struggled to alter the traits he could in Owen and metaphorically flung his hands up over the ones he couldn't.

Then again, maybe Wyldon would never have asked him to be his squire if there weren't elements in Owen that reminded Wyldon of himself. Perhaps the fact that they clashed more frequently than many knightmasters and squires did was because they were similar. Maybe the problem was that they were alike enough to argue, and different enough to have reason to do so.

Perhaps Margarry was right. Maybe she could see him and Wyldon more clearly than they could see themselves. Perhaps this was one of the few instances when distance afforded clarity of vision.

Making a mental note to return to such contemplations when he was bored, Owen went on with Margarry's letter:

_Anyway, Owen, I think that I have devoted enough parchment to describing my revelation, but if you feel otherwise, you may tell me in your next letter, and I will gladly discuss it in greater detail, since I don't believe I shall ever tire of talking of my love for you, although I fear I will have to learn to contain myself for fear of boring people. Therefore, with your indulgence, I should like to dedicate the next segment of this almost comically long letter to explaining the catalyst of my epiphany. _

_As far as such things go, it was simple. It was merely a postscript at the end of Father's last note to Mother, Karina, and me, but it was enough. All it did was tell me that I shouldn't fret if you didn't get a chance to write for awhile. That was all it said, but it was more than enough to get me worrying, because that's what Father always tells Mother whenever he is about to do something spectacularly brave or amazingly foolish depending on your perspective. Gods all bless, Owen, when I read that, it really hit me what a risky life you lead, and I realized that you could die any day. That made me understand at long last what a selfish person I had been. I hadn't thought of how awful it would be for you to perish on some lonely, bloody battlefield without knowing that I loved you more than life itself. _

_All I could do after I read that simple sentence in Father's letter was pray that you would survive long enough to read the apology that I wrote for you. I can only pray that this letter does make it into your hands, so that you know that if you had died before I could declare my love for you, you would have killed a gigantic part of myself that I didn't even realize was within me until I met you. Owen of Jesslaw, you are the half that made me whole, and before I met you, I never believed in love at first sight. _

_Now I do. Now I think that some people are meant to be together, because their strengths, weaknesses, and passions align perfectly, and when such people meet for the first time, something wonderful happens as their souls recognize that they are one. When that occurs, the people feel like they have known each other forever even though they have only just met. That is because their two half souls can finally become whole together, and two parts of the same soul always know each other even if the bodies they inhabit don't. _

_I consider myself blessed to experience such love, especially when I made so much effort to shut it out. I feel fortunate to be able to say "I love you" and mean it with all my heart and soul. That's a sensation so indescribably sweet that few people, even married ones, ever get to experience, and the only thing that would make it more delightful would be if you were alive to read it. _

_If you aren't (and I know writing this is stupid, because if you are dead, you won't be able to read this, but my fingers insist on scribbling this, anyway), I won't say that the gods were cruel to steal you from me as soon as I acknowledged the love I have for you before either of us could enjoy it fully. After all, I know we were blessed to experience true love at all, and, since I believe that our love is everlasting, surely it would survive even death. _

_Still, I hope with all my heart and soul that you have survived whatever trials Father didn't want to worry me by telling me about, because if you die, then I will die a shriveled old maid, since you would have ruined me for other men. Also, if you die, I know that my life will always be a little emptier. The sun won't shine so brightly in my world. The rainbows will seem less colorful. The sunsets will be less breathtaking. The grass won't appear as green. The flowers won't smell as tantalizing as they would when I could daydream that you would pick them for me. Horseback riding will make me feel less free than it did when I believed that one day we could race each other. Caring for dogs will make me less happy than it would when I believed that we could tend to them side by side. _

_Worrying about you is driving me insane, and so I beg you to write to me as soon as you can if you get this letter. Just knowing that you are alive and have read the truth of my feelings for you would lighten my heavy heart tremendously. _

_I realize that I have no business asking you to write back so quickly when you have far more important things to do than I do. Also, I am well aware that you would be within your rights to punish me by making me wait for a reply as you had to wait for mine. However, I trust that you won't, because that would be petty, and you aren't petty, which is one of the hundreds of reasons that I fell in love with you. _

_I know that I am selfish to be pleading for an immediate response from you, but I promise you that if you just write back, and tell me that you are still alive and that you love me despite my foolishness and my self-centeredness, I will find it in my heart to be selfless for you. If I know that you love me still, I will do anything for you. Once I would think that a weakness, but now I know it's a strength. Once I would regard that as folly, but now I know it is a different type of wisdom. _

_Love forever, _

_Margarry_

_P.S.—I would very much like to hear about the trials that Father didn't wish to tell me about, but I don't expect you to find time to write to me about them. Instead, I should like to hear about them in person. We will have time to talk (and hopefully do more) at the marriage ceremony of Prince Roald and Princess Shinkokami that practically the whole court, including you and me, will be attending along the northern border. I look forward to seeing you soon, and hope that Mithros will keep you in one piece until then. _

Once he had finished reading Margarry's letter, he whipped out a piece of parchment. Wishing that he had the time to elaborate more, he wrote her a brief note saying that he had received her letter, that he certainly still loved her more than anyone else and that he always would, that he was glad that she had been honest with him and that he would never be less than open with her, and that he looked forward to seeing her at Roald's wedding when he could explain everything to hear. Self-consciously, he concluded by admitting that his letter seemed paltry compared to hers, but it didn't stem from a lack of passion but from a lack of time, and he would prove that to her when they reunited.

Then, he folded up the note and returned his attention to unpacking. When he had completed unpacking, he cleaned the sweat and dirt off him and headed down to the mess hall to put the army's idea of food in his stomach.

Five minutes later, he was carrying a tray laden with a cup of almost rancid milk, a bowl of a vegetable stew that was more of a soup given that it was more broth than anything else, and a platter of fatty meat away from the servers. After a moment of glancing around the mess for a place to sit, he settled himself beside Davis' squad.

"This looks good," Owen commented, as he slurped enthusiastically at his stew. "Mmm. Best food I've had in awhile, this is."

"Ye've been learnin' sarcasm from Seth, I see," grumbled Davis, chopping a chunk of fat off his slab of meat and nudging it to the far side of his plate. To the group at large, he asked, "What meat do ye suppose this is, anyway?"

"It ain't meat. The army just wants ye to think it is so that ye eat it without too much complainin'," Seth responded, chewing on what seemed to be a particularly fatty bit of the mess hall's latest mystery meat. "By the way, aye, Owen's been learnin' sarcasm from me, and I'm truly delighted with his progress. It means we can move onto cosmic irony next."

"I haven't been learning sarcasm from Seth." Owen glared at Seth, thinking that even if Seth had saved Walden, he would never like the man overmuch. Focusing his attention on Davis, he added, "I've just been living off bread that got drier and more loaded with weevils by the day for a distressingly long time."

"Of course ye have. That was when ye were on your covert operation, wasn't it?" drawled Seth.

"My what?" Owen arched an impatient eyebrow at Seth.

"Yer covert operation," Seth repeated, smirking. "That's what yer jaunt to Scanra was according to rumor—an underground mission fully authorized by my lord Wyldon."

"It wasn't that at all," protested Owen automatically, not caring if he was loudly admitting to treason in a crowded mess hall.

"Don't matter what it was," Lucian cut in, his lips twisting upward wryly. "It was that if that's what my lord Wyldon calls it. It was that if that's what the grapevine has us soldiers believin' it was. It was if that's what the law regards it as. Reality is subjective. There ain't no reality but what we make with our words. If enough people called the sky purple, everyone would come to believe it was, even if they once knew better than that."

"Well, everyone will know the truth," Owen snapped. "I can't lie about what I did. That's wrong!"

"Yes, ye can lie about what ye did," announced Davis briskly. "It's called a savin' yer ass operation. Ye can hardly go around admittin' that ye committed treason. Lord Wyldon and the Crown can only look the other way if ye let them, and the only way that can occur is if ye make it as clear as they do that ye never broke the law, and that ye were intended to act as ye did all along."

"I can't lie to avoid punishment." Owen shook his head fervently. "That's cowardly."

"Well, if ye won't lie to save yer own neck, ye might lie for the sake of yer friends, Lord Wyldon, and the Crown," Davis countered, eyeing him closely over the rim of the milk glass he was drinking out off.

"What do you mean?" frowned Owen, his forehead knotting in consternation.

"I mean that if ye admit to committin' treason, then ye essentially sign yer friends' death warrents by implicatin' them," Davis explained. "Ye'll also be weakenin' the authority of the Crown and my lord Wyldon by makin' it look like they didn't punish ye right away for yer treason, and that'll make everyone think that they can decide what laws they wish to follow and which they don't. Ye certainly can't run a war or a country with people thinkin' such nonsense. Ye might consider that."

"I will." Owen bit his lip. He hated the idea of lying, but he hated the notion of being the death of Kel and Neal and possibly Esmond, Seaver, Merric, and the soldiers who had joined Kel. Still, he had to check something else before he made his decision. "You think that Lord Wyldon would want me to lie about this?"

"Yes," Davis answered without a trace of hesitation. "I'd bet my favorite shirt that the rumors started from him. He probably said something about authorizing an undercover mission to Scanra to some solider knowin' it would be spread all over the mess at suppertime. Once the rumor had spread, it would be pretty easy to convince everybody that was what happened. Convincin' the king in his reports that treason didn't happen was probably also relatively simple since ye lot managed to do away with Blayce and Stenmun. When people succeed, it's easier to turn a blind eye to these sorts of things. Besides, it flatters the Crown more if it was an official undercover mission rather than an unofficial bit of treason."

"I—I guess that I can lie then," whispered Owen reluctantly. Lying still repulsed him, but he was willing to do it if Wyldon had gone to this much trouble to save Owen, Kel, Neal, and the others whose necks were on the line. It would be ungrateful to throw out Wyldon's sacrifice.

His stomach churning as he realized that there was a point where even he would sell out his honor, Owen looked around the table, searching for Walden's face, so he could see what Walden thought about his choice. However, he couldn't find the man, and, after a moment more of looking, he asked Davis, feeling guilty that he hadn't noticed Walden's absence earlier, "Where's Walden?"

"He's up in the sick ward still," Davis said. "His stomach wound got infected, and he's still fightin' off a fever, but at least he's no longer prone to bouts of delirium."

"I'm going to visit him now." Owen ate the last slice of his meat in one gulp. Then, he shoved himself away from the table and collected his tray. As he walked away to return his dishes to the kitchen, he called over his shoulder to the rest of Davis' squad, "See you later."

Once he had returned his tray, he hurried out of the mess hall and up to the sick ward. When he entered it, he was appalled to see how jammed it was with soldiers wrapped in scarlet soaked bandages, soldiers sleeping fitfully, soldiers vomiting into basins, and wane healers rushing between patients trying to offer what comfort they could for the wounds that were too small for them to drain their energy by healing or too large for them to cure. Trying not to look at all the men who were stoically refusing to scream despite the pain that they must have been in, Owen walked into Walden's room, which had two more patients crammed into it than it had last time Owen had been here.

"I thought that last battle was a victory, not a defeat," muttered Owen by way of a greeting as he came up beside Walden.

"It was, and a glorious one at that." Walden offered him a faint, bitter grin. "Ye can ask the rest of Davis' squad to tell ye all about it like they did me."

"It doesn't look like much of a victory, nonetheless a glorious one."

"Probably because no victory is ever glorious, not when yer killin' the man across from ye, not when the man next to ye is dyin', not when the man ye ate lunch with an hour ago might be maimed by sunset, not when girls are cryin' over their dead lovers, and not when mothers are havin' their hearts broken over their dead sons," Walden returned in a hoarse voice. "How can somethin' be glorious when yer inflictin' that kind of agony on your enemy and sufferin' like that yerself?"

Listening to him, Owen couldn't help but duck his head in shame. Hearing Walden's words made him ashamed of the parts within him that enjoyed combat—the parts that relished winning, outsmarting the enemy, and protecting the civilians that would have been killed or enslaved by the Scanrans. Yes, he deplored the loss of life and the intense suffering. Yet, exhilaration never failed to fill him when he managed to emerge triumphant from the fray. That glee was no less real than the grief that swamped him when a comrade perished. He'd celebrated when vicious, venal beings like Blayce and Stenmun had met gruesome ends, and it was all so complicated. If war was wrong, how could he possibly derive any kind of pleasure or triumph from it and still call himself a halfway moral individual? Wasn't there something twisted about all that?

Before he could contemplate this at greater length, Walden went on, "The man to my right lost his tongue in battle, so he can't scream in pain, but it's even worse to watch his empty mouth open in a silent howl of anguish. The boy across the room from ye, he lied about his age to join the army, and this was his first real engagement. When he was brought in here, he said that he thought that victory would feel wonderful, but it felt awful, and he couldn't imagine how much worse defeat must feel. I told him that it didn't feel much different really."

"You're waxing rather existential about the war effort recently." Owen tried to make it sound like a joke, even though it was hard to joke with someone who seemed as burdened with knowledge as Walden did right now. "It's the wrong time for that sort of attitude. We're supposed to be optimistic, and eager to press our advantage against the Scanrans now that Blayce and Stenmun are dead and the killing devices are no more."

"Being surrounded by injured and dyin' people makes it hard to be optimistic, Owen," Walden pointed out, burying himself deeper into his thin blankets.

"You should try focusing on the good, not the bad," suggested Owen, squeezing his hand to warm it. "You should strive to see the best in people, not the worst, like you told me when I was here last. You should think about the healers that are pouring their energy into healing the wounded, rather than the violence that placed them here. You should stare at the rainbow, not the rain."

"If ye say so." Walden eyed him owlishly, and then asked in a voice that was barely above a whisper, "Oh, Owen, did ye have to?"

"Did I have to what?" Owen repeated, nonplussed. "Did I have to go to Scanra? Yes, and that's one thing I'll never regret no matter how long my life lasts."

"No, not that." Walden gave a brief head shake. "I was askin' if ye really had to spit on the bodies of Blayce and Stenmun."

"How do you know about that?" Owen gawked at Walden.

"Don't be forgettin' about my Gift." Walden emitted what should have been a chuckle but sounded more like a rasp. "I saw yer battle with Blayce and Stenmun as it happened and the aftermath. I wish I hadn't seen the aftermath. I wish I hadn't seen ye showin' such contempt for the dead, Owen."

"Blayce and Stenmun deserved what they got and more," snarled Owen, struggling to keep his tone soft enough that he would not disturb the room's other occupants.

"Oh, they needed to die, so that they stopped hurtin' and killin' innocent people," Walden conceded. "They didn't need to be spat upon and kicked at like that, though."

Flushing as he recalled that he had once been horrified that Lord Wyldon would leave Scanran bodies out for Stormwings to feast upon, Owen insisted, "Blayce and Stenmun were pure evil, Den. They don't deserve any respect or mercy."

"And I'm sure that they'd be glad that they got ye to descend to their level." As he established as much, Walden sank further into his pillows.

"You think that I'm a bad person." Owen felt the flames in his cheeks rising. "You think I'm ruthless."

"No." Now, it was Walden's turn to squeeze his fingers gingerly. "I don't believe that at all. I think yer a good person. Yer more generous, more honest, and more brave than most. Yer more emotional and more passionate than most, too, and that can lead ye into trouble at times."

"You're like Lord Wyldon, then. You believe that I feel too much too keenly," Owen guessed. "You think that I let things matter too much to me. You think that causes me to take crazy chances. In short, you think that I am not detached enough."

"I didn't say that, and ye don't need to be puttin' words into my mouth," scowled Walden. "I know ye, Owen. I recognize that ye wouldn't be ye without yer burnin' desire for justice, yer reckless courage, yer thirst for victory, and yer refusal to accept defeat. I know that ye wouldn't be ye if ye weren't so easily moved by the suffering of yer friends, and the plights of strangers. I know ye wouldn't be ye if ye didn't feel so much it hurt. I accept that, and I reckon that Lord Wyldon does, too, and he only scolds, because he doesn't want ye to do something stupid that will cost ye yer life one day."

"And is that why you are scolding me now?" Owen pressed, fighting the odd urge to smile.

"No, I'm scoldin' ye now because I don't want ye doing cruel things in bursts of emotion." Walden met his gaze so intensely that Owen was tempted to look away, but the very might of Walden's eyes prevented him from doing so. "I know it's not easy to go through the world with an open heart like yers, but don't let anyone harden it. Don't give into yer anger or yer hatred, or ye'll regret it when the fury and the loathing are gone. Don't confuse justice with vengeance. Protect others; don't punish them."

"Den, I swear that spitting on Blayce and Stenmun didn't feel bad. It felt good. It felt right."

"Of course it did." Walden's manner was bleak. "Evil often feels good. It's easy to convince ourselves that we are doing the right thing even when we know that we are actin' immorally. It's all too simple to muddle vengeance with justice. It's all too easy to become more concerned with punishment than with compassion."

Remembering with a pang how he had struggled with the question of whether his refusal to accept the former bandits was a byproduct of a thirst for justice or a craving for vengeance, and not comfortable with the notion of Walden serving as his conscience, Owen pivoted to go, snapping, "I can't believe that I just got back from a life-or-death mission, and all you want to do is lecture me."

Before Walden could offer any reply that might soften his stance, Owen stalked out of the room filled with a seething indignation he enjoyed too much to worry about.

He didn't start worrying about his flash of temper until he had marched back to his room, had changed, and had slid under his own covers. It was only then that he began to feel disgusted by his own anger. It was only then that he was abashed at how he had taken out his own guilt and humiliation on his wounded friend. Flooded with shame and remorse, he couldn't sleep, and instead spent the night tossing and turning. When the sun rose, he stumbled out of bed, more tired than he had been when he got into it.

His exhaustion must have been apparent to anyone with decent eyesight, because when he entered Lord Wyldon's office the next morning, the first thing his knightmaster said was, "Mithros, Squire, you look like you're about to fall asleep on your feet. I thought I told you to get some rest."

"You did, and I tried, sir," Owen said, hoping that this would satisfy Lord Wyldon so that he could attend to his morning duties. The sooner he started working, the sooner he would finish, and the sooner he completed his tasks, the sooner he could apologize to Walden for his savagery.

"You tried?" Wyldon's eyes narrowed, suggesting he deemed Owen's answer utterly unsatisfactory. "Well, you can't have tried too hard, then. When people are as exhausted as you were yesterday, drifting off to sleep shouldn't be a challenge."

"I had a lot on my mind, my lord," countered Owen defensively. No doubt he would be shouting at Wyldon next, and Wyldon, unlike Walden, would not tolerate being snapped at. Unfortunately, Owen was too exhausted to control his tongue or keep a leash on his temper right now. All he wanted to do was apologize to Walden. Then, he would no longer feel guilty, and nothing would prevent him from collapsing on his bed and sleeping for a week.

"I imagine that you did," Wyldon allowed, giving a short nod. After a few beats, he added, "Would you care to talk about it?"

"Talking isn't going to do me any good." At least talking to Lord Wyldon wasn't going to benefit him. Talking to Walden would to him a world of good, but discussing his display of temper in the sick ward with Wyldon would probably only result in punishment work. That was just about the last thing he needed right now.

"With your current attitude, I gather that it won't. At the present, I would hazard a guess that the less you use your tongue, the better off you will be, since it seems determined to land you in trouble." Lord Wyldon shot Owen a look so cold that he almost shivered. "I am perfectly aware that you are exhausted, because even a fool could see the bags under your eyes. I've had my fair share of sleepless nights, as well, recently. Tired people say and do things they do not intend to. That is why I am trying to be patient with you, but by this point I have only one frayed nerve left and you are rubbing against it the wrong way. Now, you can either explain what is bothering you, in which case I might be able to help you, or you can keep your problem to yourself and start doing the work I need you to do. Either way, I expect you to resume treating me with the respect I deserve now. I have waited long enough for you to return from Scanra to not tolerate having you back physically, but not mentally or emotionally."

"I'm not the same person I was before I went to Scanra." Owen set his chin defiantly, thinking that Wyldon would be waiting forever for the return of a being who no longer existed.

"No, you aren't. I accept that. What I don't accept is this new surliness of yours." Wyldon glowered in a manner that made it clear to Owen that when he had finished digging his own grave he should lay down in it.

About to protest that he wasn't being surly, Owen realized that the argument alone proved the point, and closed his mouth soundlessly. He was being moody, and he was striking out at the people around him that he cared about the most. Worse still, he couldn't even pinpoint a reason why he was doing so. That was immensely troubling. After all, he might not have much of a filter on his emotions or upon his tongue, but he was a friendly young man. He had no desire to hurt the feelings of strangers, nonetheless of those he was closest to. Similarly, he was the type of being who would argue to defend himself and his beliefs, but he wasn't belligerent, and he certainly wasn't irascible. Most definitely, he didn't stay angry for hours, because he was at the core a cheerful person.

At least, he had been before Scanra. Maybe this new surliness was a result of his mission there, but it couldn't be. If he was this mercurial all the time, he wouldn't have any friends left by the end of the week. That wasn't acceptable. Owen was sociable and loved people. He needed to connect with others who liked him. Otherwise, he would perish of loneliness.

"I'm sorry, sir." Owen swallowed the lump that had formed in his throat. "I've been angry since last night, and I don't really even understand why. I'm taking my temper out on people I know I shouldn't even though I don't want to, and I can't force myself to stop it. I know it's hateful, and I do it anyway. My mouth won't stop saying things I don't want it to say, either. It's like it has a mind of its own that is determined to say the nastiest stuff it can. It's even in control now. My lips are moving, and I really have no idea what I am saying right now."

"Apology accepted." Wyldon must have noticed the pain and frustration in Owen's tone, because he didn't chide him for babbling and some of his severity disappeared. "If it's any consolation, many of your problems will probably disappear when you take my advice and get some sleep. You are exhausted, and tired people are illogical and overly emotional as a rule."

Wyldon was probably right that the lack of sleep was chomping away at him, but Owen thought there was more to it than that. After all, when he looked back on the root of his wrath, he realized that it had stemmed from his uncertainty about how he should have treated the former bandits he encountered. That was the underlying cause of his moodswings, and he would be volatile until he got the answers he needed. Maybe Wyldon could provide him with the guidance he desperately required right now. At any rate, it was worth a shot. Anything was worth a try if there was even the slightest chance that it would be the death of his new surliness.

"Does the offer to discuss whatever is troubling me still stand, sir?" he asked, throwing caution to the winds, as he had been doing since the outset of the conversation.

"It does." Wyldon nodded and gestured at one of the chairs across from him. "Sit. I don't want you collapsing in my office."

"I don't know how to start." Biting his lip, Owen discovered that when he actually wished to talk, the words eluded him.

"Normally I would advise that you take a moment to organize your thoughts, but I know you well enough to realize that if you could do that, you probably wouldn't require my help at all," commented Wyldon. "Therefore, I instead suggest that you start wherever the whim strikes you and go from there while I listen and do my best to interpret what you're saying."

"Very well, sir." Owen nodded, and then began awkwardly, "Ever since my mother was killed by bandits, I've wanted to be a knight, so that I could protect people from them. I dreamed of ridding the country of them, so that no more families had to be torn apart by them like mine was."

"A noble enough ambition," remarked Wyldon.

"That's what I used to think, my lord." Miserably, Owen shrugged. "Now I'm not so sure. Now I'm wondering if my desire to rid the country of bandits is more about punishing the people who killed my mother than it is about protecting other innocent people. I don't know if I am more concerned with vengeance than justice."

"What makes you question your motives after all these years?" Wyldon arched an eyebrow at him.

"When I was helping Kel in Scanra, I had to work with some former bandits," explained Owen. "I cooperated with them well enough, because I didn't want to compromise the mission by not, but I couldn't find it in my heart to forgive them for what they did in the past. I couldn't allow them to redeem themselves in my eyes by remaining loyal to Kel and helping to destroy Blayce and Stenmun, even though I know that many of them probably resorted to becoming bandits because their families were starving. That scares me. I don't want to be a merciless person, sir."

"Current bandits are different than past bandits," Wyldon replied. "Former bandits may indeed feel remorse for their actions, but most present bandits are fiercely proud of their outlaw lifestyle. Those who show repentance for their previous misdeeds perhaps deserve forgiveness, but those who don't need to be brought to justice. Plunder and murder are not appropriate reactions to poverty, and letting bandits roam the country freely is hardly merciful to the people they will victimize in the future."

"So I'm not wrong to wish to rid the realm of bandits?" Owen tilted his head inquisitively.

"That's an answer you need to arrive at for yourself, because only you will know what is right or wrong for you," answered Wyldon, itching the scars that lined his face, which was a clear indicator that he was considering his words even more carefully than usual. "Only you can decide what works best for you. How strongly you feel about things, what you choose to care about, and how you handle those emotions are decisions I can't make for you. I can give you the benefit of my experience, and I can tell you what I think, but I can't live your life for you."

"I already know what you think, sir." Owen could feel some of the impatience that had surged through him during his conversation with Walden start to bubble up again. "You think I'm hotheaded. You think I'm impulsive. You think that I let myself be ruled by my emotions too much."

For a moment, silence filled the study. Then, Wyldon said, "It is true that I sometimes wish that you were more moderate with your feelings, but, in all fairness to you, many people find me too cold and a heartless knight is as dangerous in his own way as a reckless one. Where we fall on the spectrum between being slaves to our emotions and being ruthless, completely detached people is something everyone has to decide for himself. All I can tell you is that I don't think that wanting to rid the country of bandits is immoral. If you do it out of a sense of compassion for the past, present, and future victims, or out of a thirst to enforce justice, it is a good and noble thing to do. If you do it out of rage, revenge, or hatred, then you dance with darkness. If you offer that the ends justify the means without proper thought to ascertain that they do, you have succumbed to the insidious energy of evil."

Wyldon sighed. "If you remember nothing else from this talk, Owen, remember this: power wants to be used. It must be kept under constant vigil, or else it will seduce you and corrupt you. It will become an end in itself, and it will consume the good in you. When you're a knight, you'll always live on that edge. A single misstep, and you can plummet into the depths of darkness." Here, Wyldon's eyes shadowed, and Owen suspected that the man was reflecting on the failure that Bevin, Joren, and Vinson embodied. "It's happened to many, and it is always a tragedy. As with an addictive drink, it is all too easy to tell yourself, 'I'll do it just this once.' That's not how it works. The only thing that stands between you and the darkness that wants to devour your soul is your own will, discipline, and conscience."

"I'll keep that in mind," Owen managed to choke out after a long pause, although he suspected that he would never let his mind contemplate how scary a place the world was or how thin a strand separated good from evil. It would probably result in him going insane or becoming evil himself. In order to drag his brain away from such musings, he concluded resolutely, "I'll do my part to make the country a safer place by trying to rid the realm of bandits, but I'll do it out of compassion and justice, not out of vengeance."

"Good." Wyldon nodded in satisfaction and pushed a pile of papers across his desk toward Owen. "Now that is settled, take these down to the quartermaster for me. Don't bother to go on patrol with Davis' squad today, and use the extra time to get some sleep."

"Yes, sir."

As Owen hurried out of the room to deliver the papers to the quartermaster, he knew that he would employ some of his free time in the sick ward apologizing to Walden, however.


	37. Chapter 37

Author's Note: I'm sorry, people, but this is another comically long chapter, so brace yourself, and make certain that you have refreshments by the computer with you.

As far as Owen's Ordeal goes, due to Kel's missing year, it could either take place the Midwinter after Lady Knight or the following year. In my personal canon, I am inclined to make it take place the Midwinter after the Scanran adventure, because otherwise I have to justify writing about another year of Owen being Wyldon's squire. Honestly, I think that Lady Knight essentially completes the respective character arcs of Owen and Wyldon, and, while there are a couple more things that I would like to include in my fic, they fit in nicely during the time leading up to Owen's Ordeal and everything. Well, that's all the stuff I plan on yattering on about.

Reunions and Introductions

"This place really is overflowing with people," remarked Owen two weeks later, staring as he and Lord Wyldon walked toward the practice courts of Egremont Castle, one of the largest Minchi strongholds and the location of the celebrations for Roald and Shinkokami's wedding.

"What did you expect?" Lord Wyldon asked briskly, while the two of them strode down the dirt pathway that separated the fenced training yards. His eyes scanning the courts filled with wrestling, fencing, and jousting knights and squires, searching for an empty one, he went on before Owen could answer, "In case you've forgotten, Tortall is celebrating a royal marriage. That means that just about every noble in the country capable of moving by themselves tried to come here, and a vast majority of them succeeded. While they are here, many of them will attempt to take advantage of the generous mood the monarchs will undoubtedly be in upon the occasion of the wedding of their firstborn son to gain favors from Their Majesties. Everyone will be fighting for the chance to brush elbows with royalty in order to enhance themselves and their families, and in order to make life difficult for their rivals. All of this will make these festivities about as enjoyable as such things normally are."

Remembering how they had only joined the royal progress for a couple of days on their journey north when he had just started out as a squire, Owen assumed without too much disruption of brain tissue that Wyldon actually meant that such things would be as patient-trying as usual. Well, if Wyldon thought the parties were horrible when he was participating in them, he clearly didn't appreciate that they were fifty times worse when you had to deal with Oakbridge, who genuinely seemed to regard it as a tragedy if fruit was brought out with the appetizers rather than the desserts, fussing over everything.

"That is why we will be leaving exactly three days after Roald and Shinkokami are married, which is the minimum number of days a guest can remain at a royal wedding without violating the rules of etiquette," concluded Wyldon. "No matter what some people think, the war with the Scanrans is far from over, and we can't afford to spend time lounging around like cats in the sunlight."

Although he should have been pleased to hear that that he would be away from the throngs of fawning courtiers and Oakbridge's irascibility, he was upset because that reduced the time he had to spend with Margarry, whom he had yet to see because she had only ridden in with her mother and Karina early that morning. Still, he knew better than to mention such a feeling to Lord Wyldon. His knightmaster seemed to tolerate albeit barely his relationship with his youngest daughter as long as it wasn't brought up around him. Anyway, Owen realized that Wyldon would also be sacrificing time with Lady Vivienne, and, therefore, was unlikely to be overly sympathetic to his complaint. Instead, he chose to address Lord Wyldon's first question, since it seemed like safer territory.

"I didn't forget that it was a royal wedding, sir," he answered. "I just didn't expect about as many people as are normally in the Royal Palace to cram themselves into a castle half its size."

Wyldon emitted an impatient tut, and Owen was regretting even mentioning his shock at the amount of knights and squires assembled on the practice courts when he recognized that the aggravated noise wasn't, as he had initially suspected, directed at him. Following his knightmaster's disapproving look, he saw two knights in the practice court ahead of them on their right who had obviously overindulged in spirits at the party that Owen had been forced to serve at last evening.

A laugh swelled in Owen's throat that he had to struggle to stifle as he watched the two inebriated men. Shouting an incoherent threat, one man would lurch forward and swing his weapon frantically at his opponent, whom he would miss, cursing loudly, by about half a foot. Even though it was clear that the blow would not land, the second knight would raise his sword to parry the hit that had already passed, stumble backward, recover somewhat, and falter forward, blasting out nonsensical insults all the way.

At this sight, which could have put court jesters with their faux sword battles to shame, the chuckle that had been building up in Owen's throat reached his mouth and pushed against his lips, imploring for exit.

"Disgraceful." Wyldon, who was utterly stone-faced, scowled at the knights who were engaged in an unintentional parody of fencing. "First year pages do better the first time they pick up a sword."

This comment made Owen's lips twitch, and the laugh he had been fighting to hold in came roaring out.

"I'm glad you find their antics so amusing, Jesslaw," snapped Lord Wyldon, focusing his glower on his squire now, and effectively quelling Owen's laughter immediately. "Come along. We're wasting time. I daresay you won't learn any technique from watching them."

Thinking that the only thing he had learned from watching the two drunken men duel was to never engage in a swordfight while intoxicated, Owen hurried to catch up with Wyldon, who was walking briskly down the path that ran through the practice yards. Finally, just when Owen was becoming convinced that they would be unable to discover a vacant training yard, they came across one, and he followed Wyldon onto it.

Five minutes later, after they had both completed their stretching, they unsheathed their swords. Then, their weapons raised, they circled each other slowly, as if in a dance, their eyes alert for any misstep that would give them the slightest advantage.

Normally, Owen would get impatient with waiting for his knightmaster to make the first move, and would do so himself, even though he knew that it would parried easily and would not come as a surprise. This time, however, he bullied his body into waiting for Wyldon to go on the offensive first, his eyes locked on the man, almost as if he were challenging Wyldon to make the first move.

In the end, after an excruciating wait, Wyldon did. He whipped his sword down in a powerful strike—once, twice, three times. Owen was there to block each blow, the graceful arcs he made with his blade confident and accurate, and his gaze never leaving the older man's face, as he willed his knightmaster to see just how much his swordsmanship had improved since he had left for Scanra.

The two of them dodged and weaved across the yard. With every hit, as often was the case when they sparred, Wyldon pushed Owen further back, but this time was different. On this occasion, Owen wanted to retreat, because he had a surprise planned.

When his back was almost pressed against the wooden fence, Owen swung suddenly, ducked, and turned, so that he now had the upperhand in the battle. Spotting the slight astonishment that flickered across his knightmaster's features when he executed this maneuver, Owen grinned

Rushing to take care of the man's shock since he understood that it would have the life expectancy of an ice crystal in midsummer, Owen picked up the pace of the confrontation a notch. Now it was he who was striking repeatedly, and Wyldon who was on the defensive.

At best, this lasted for a moment, before the fight leveled out, and both of them spent equal time advancing and retreating across the practice court. For what felt like hours, they continued on like this long after their breaths seemed to have left them permanently and all their sweat had poured out of them onto their backs in a futile attempt to chill them.

Finally, when the blazing summer sun had reached its greatest height and was beating mercilessly down on them, Lord Wyldon called for a halt. It took a second for Owen to remember what that order meant. Then, when his senses had returned to him somewhat, he shoved his sword back into his hilt.

Without speaking, the two of them leaned against the nearest fence and swallowed water from their canteens. As he gulped his water, Owen waited for Wyldon to begin his critique of his squire's performance. It hadn't taken him long as a squire to figure out that Wyldon seldom offered instruction in the middle of a practice duel or joust. Instead, he seemed to prefer to have Owen learn all he could through experience, and to explain what he didn't later. In the beginning, Owen hadn't been comfortable with this method, since he could never know until it was too late whether he was doing well or awfully. Now, though, he was used to it, and probably would have found it distracting if Wyldon had provided regular commentary.

"A very good fight overall," Lord Wyldon announced at last, and pride flooded Owen. He knew he had done well—he might not have won the fight, but he had kept Wyldon at bay, and that meant that he could hold at bay if not defeat most knights—but it was satisfying to hear Wyldon acknowledge that. While Owen considered himself a fairly self-confident individual, he couldn't deny that Lord Wyldon's opinion mattered a great deal to him. "You still would do well to make your high blocks higher, but other than that your swordsmanship has improved vastly since we last had a chance to spar like this. That reverse of yours was particularly remarkable."

"Something tells me that it won't be so useful against you again, though, sir," Owen pointed out. "It's not really so surprising a second time."

"No, it's not," agreed Wyldon dryly. "However, I suspect that many of your opponents will be astonished by it. In a real fight, you only need to surprise your foe once in order to get under their guard. In a real fight, Owen, you rarely have to worry about a rematch, which is fortunate, because most of your attention should be focused on not getting killed."

"Yes, my lord." Owen nodded, somewhat taken aback that Wyldon would defend him from any of his own criticisms about his fencing. He supposed it was another result of his Scanran adventure, because, after he had returned from helping Kel destroy Blayce and Stenmun, he had noticed that Wyldon had grown softer with him. For whatever reason, while the lectures and commands continued undiminished, the amount of praise had increased noticeably. It still occurred rarely because Wyldon could never be regarded as an indulgent teacher, but now Owen was far more confident of Wyldon's affection than he had been before he committed treason. All in all, it was very ironic, but Owen liked the change too much to protest.

"You may not have beaten me today as you wanted to do, but the day that you do so may not be that far off, Owen." Wyldon's lips twisted into a wry smile.

The words should have filled Owen with pleasure. Yet, they didn't. They discomfited him. Without thinking about it, he had leaped over a line that he could never step back on the other side of. He had crossed a bridge that he hadn't even noticed existed until he had already left it behind him. He had taken another step toward becoming a knight when he had reached a draw in a swordfight with Wyldon. Once the notion would have elated him, and there was still a part of him that cheered at the prospect of being closer to fulfilling the dream that he had nourished since childhood. However, another fraction of him felt like weeping. The element in him that feared being alone wanted to remain Wyldon's squire forever.

_That's ridiculous_, the logical component snapped at the overly sentimental part. _You can't be a squire forever. The whole point of being a squire at all is so that you learn what you need to know to be a knight, and the realm would fall apart if all would-be-knights decided they'd rather stay squires forever. _

The overly sentimental part of him was only slightly mollified by this reasoning, so the rational element added, _Besides, you're not ready to have your Ordeal yet. You can worry more about this at Midwinter. No need to get yourself stressed out too soon. Some things are best left to the last minute. _

Still, for some reason, in that instant, it occurred to him with overwhelming strength and clarity that without Wyldon he would barely know how to hold a sword, nonetheless fight properly with one. Equally abruptly, he realized that he owed Wyldon a great debt of gratitude for that. In fact, when it came down to it, every page that Wyldon had trained was similarly indebted to the man, but all the other pages had gone on to a different knightmaster, lessening how much they owed. Imagining that Wyldon probably was never thanked by the legions of pages he had trained because he was so severe with them that they couldn't help but feel much more attached to their knightmasters, made Owen determined to convey at least some of his appreciation. After all, Wyldon might not have instructed future knights for thanks, but that didn't mean he didn't deserve to receive any.

"You've taught me a lot, yet I know you still have much to teach me, sir," Owen answered, wishing that he didn't sound so awkward. "I'm grateful for everything you've taught me."

"I do still have much to teach you, Squire." Somehow managing to acknowledge Owen's gratitude and confirm his words in one gesture, Wyldon nodded crisply. "Come. Let's go to the stables now. There's someone I'd like you to meet."

Obediently, Owen walked with Wyldon to the castle stables, puzzling the whole way over who exactly Wyldon wanted him to meet. When they reached the stables, he followed Wyldon over to Heart's stall.

"You want me to meet Heart, sir?" Owen frowned, because he regarded himself as pretty well acquainted with that particular creature. After all, he had cleaned, fed, and saddled Heart along with Happy for awhile now.

"Not unless you've recently been striken with amnesia. If you haven't, I'd like you to meet the stallion next to Heart." As he established as much, Wyldon jerked his head at the stall beside Heart, which contained a steed as dark as midnight with a pure white stripe running down his head.

"He's gorgeous, my lord," gasped Owen, staring at the new horse, who would have been within an inch of Happy's height and who was almost as thickly muscled.

"His name is Blaze," Lord Wyldon informed him, as Owen extended his palm for the horse to sniff. "Margarry named him that for the white stripe on his head. Sometimes I think that the gods granted her foresight when she named him, since he has become one of the swiftest horses that I've ever raised."

For a second, Wyldon watched Blaze lick Owen's hand before he said, "Of course, if you wish to rename him as you did Happy, you may do so."

"Rename him?" stuttered Owen, his hand freezing in the middle of petting Blaze's head. "You're giving him to me?"

"Well, I didn't ask my wife to bring him up here so that he could attend parties with me," Wyldon responded briskly, and, then more gently, "Yes, Owen, I'm giving Blaze to you."

"You can't, sir." Owen shook his head frantically. After he had gotten Happy killed, he couldn't accept another horse from Lord Wyldon. That would be an unfair abuse of his knightmaster's generosity and trust. Besides, a nasty voice in his brain hissed that if he had been the death of Happy, he might be the death of Blaze, too, and he couldn't bear that idea.

"I most certainly can." Wyldon's lips thinned in a sure sign that he did not appreciate being contradicted. "He's my horse, so I can give him to anyone I desire, and I wish to give him to you."

About to counter that he wasn't obliged to accept Wyldon's gift, Owen stopped the words before they could spill out of his mouth, since he was well aware that they made him sound like a spoiled brat who couldn't comprehend the enormity of the present his knightmaster was offering. That wasn't the case. Indeed, it was the opposite. Owen appreciated it too much to accept it.

"My lord, you don't have to give me Blaze," he stated, instead, relieved that for once he had found words that were at least halfway tactful. "Marigold will work fine for me until I can make arrangements to buy a new horse."

His family could afford to provide him with his own horse. After all, the Jesslaws were hardly impoverished like the Eldorones, or forced to be thrifty like the Mindelans. Sure, the Jesslaws weren't the richest of the nobles, but they definitely didn't have to worry about the amount of money they possessed. Their wealth was more due to the fertile land of their fief than to Owen's father, who didn't care about much that went on in his land as long as his wine was well-stocked, yes, but that didn't make the money any less valid.

"You're wrong. I think that you'll find that I have to give Blaze to you," Wyldon corrected him tersely. "I'm perfectly aware that you won't have the chance to make arrangements to procure a new horse for yourself until after your Ordeal, and I'm not about to let you ride into battle on an inadequate horse like Marigold. If I did that, I would practically be as remiss in my duties as if I sent you into war with a rusty sword."

Despite Wyldon's argument, Owen knew that Wyldon didn't have to furnish him with a new horse. After all, even though Marigold paled next to Happy and Blaze, she wasn't such a dreadful mount that she was incapable of being ridden into battle. No, Wyldon had chosen to give him a new horse and was pretending that he had been obligated to, because the man's kindnesses tended to take a convoluted, backward form, and sometimes even concealed themselves as cruelties. It was all part of Wyldon's manner of keeping others at a distance and hiding the fact that, while he was watching, he was feeling as deeply as anyone else.

"I can't take Blaze, sir," Owen insisted, sticking out his chin.

"You can, and, more importantly, you will." Before Owen, whose mouth was opening, could respond, Wyldon held up a hand to silence him. "Be quiet, and let me finish. This scene is rapidly transforming into a comedy, and, since I don't have time to waste playacting with you, Squire, I will end this nonsense immediately. Now, I realize that you want Blaze, and I know that you're aware that I wish you to have him. However, due to your guilt about Happy, you're determined to turn what could be a simple matter into a complicated one. As a result, I have no choice but to make it an easy issue again."

"It's already an easy issue, my lord," pointed out Owen. "It's as simple as the fact that I won't accept Blaze from you."

"Wrong again," snapped Wyldon, and Owen couldn't help but flinching at his knightmaster's coldest, most unrelenting tone. His dark eyes digging into Owen's gray ones, Wyldon continued, speaking slowly as if to ensure that the younger man heard and registered every syllable, "I'm not suggesting that you take Blaze, nor am I requesting that you take Blaze. No, I'm ordering you to take Blaze, and how you feel about that is not a factor. I'm commanding you to take Blaze, and you, as my squire, must obey."

Again, Owen was about to protest. Then, his mouth slammed shut as he realized what he was doing was stupid. The truth was that he did want Blaze, and he had ever since he had laid eyes on the creature. When half his heart longed to own Blaze, there was no way that he could win an argument against Wyldon.

Besides, he told himself, if he was obeying his knightmaster's orders to take this particular horse, then he didn't have to feel guilty about doing so, or at least not too guilty. As this thought crossed his mind, he recognized that Wyldon's command, however irritably it had been issued, was probably meant as another veiled act of charity. Wyldon probably knew that Owen couldn't choose to take the stallion, but he could if an order made it his duty.

"I'll take Blaze then, sir," Owen conceded around the mountain that suddenly had sprouted up in his throat without warning. Looking deeply into Wyldon's eyes so that the man could see that he appreciated his gift more than words could ever hope to explain, he said simply, "Thank you."

"Rest assured that Blaze will prefer a life of action to a life in my stables," Wyldon told him, clasping Owen's shoulder for a few seconds and then releasing it again. "I know that now he's yours, you'll treat him well."

"I will," promised Owen, nodding his head eagerly. If, Mithros and all the other deities forbid, he managed to get Blaze killed, it would be an accident. Tortall would switch places with the Copper Isles before he mistreated a horse of his on purpose.

"Good," Wyldon replied. "Now, since it seems unjust that everyone else here is having a holiday of sorts, you have the rest of the afternoon off. Feel free to take the time to become better acquainted with Blaze or to see if you can find any of your friends in this circus. Just make sure that you are ready to serve at the party at seven tonight."

"I will be, sir." There was something else that Owen could easily promise, although with far less enthusiasm. After all, Oakbridge had reminded the squires on at least nine occasions of the time that they had to arrive to serve at the party, and Owen had every intention of being punctual, as he didn't want Oakbridge blowing a major artery all over him.

Satisfied, Wyldon turned and made his way out of the stables, leaving Owen alone with Blaze. Continuing to stroke his new horse, Owen thought that the animal wasn't as handsome or as spirited as Happy. That was a pity, yet, for Blaze's sake and for his own, Owen couldn't afford to hold that against the stallion. After all, no creature would ever be the same as Happy, and that was why Owen missed him so much. However, while Happy could never truly be replaced, that was no reason to refuse to form a new bond with a horse as magnificent as Blaze.

"We'll get along fine, you'll see," Owen murmured to his new mount. "Don't worry. Everything will work out, and I won't get you killed like I did Happy."

Happy would have snorted and rammed his head lightly against Owen's forehead; Blaze whinnied softly and nuzzled against Owen.

"That's Blaze, in case you don't know," announced a clear voice from behind him, and Owen didn't have to turn to discover who the speaker was. He would recognize that matter-of-fact tone even if he had to go years without hearing it. It had been integrated into the very core of his being, and sometimes his brain even addressed him in it when he was engaged in an argument with himself. "I named him myself. Of course, given your tendency to rename horses, he might not be Blaze for much longer."

"I know that he's called Blaze, and that you're the one who named him that. You're father told me," answered Owen, feeling like his tongue was glued to the roof of his mouth, as he was abruptly and acutely aware that he had declared his love for her. If he had realized at the time that doing so would render all future exchanges with her indescribably stilted, he wouldn't have done so. As Margarry came over to stand beside him, he tentatively reached his hand out over what had to be the mile's distance that separated them and wrapped the fingers Blaze hadn't lapped around hers. When he did so, something powerful and hot burned through his veins, and he found that the words were stumbling out of his lips in a worse jumble than ever. "Actually, I'm not planning on renaming Blaze. Keeping the name you gave him will keep me connected to you."

"That might receive first prize as the strangest compliment I have ever been honored with." Margarry giggled, but it sounded so much more forced and less free-spirited than usual that Owen was painfully aware that she felt as uneasy with the situation as he did. This was confirmed when she tugged him around so that they were face-to-face, and neither could avoid the other's gaze.

"Let's strangle some of the awkwardness that is choking our conversation," she suggested in a voice that was mostly calm except for a minor tremor near the conclusion of the sentence. "The truth is that we're both scared that we might have made a mistake when we declared our love for each other in our letters. We're nervous about meeting each other in case we don't please one another as much as we thought we did, even though we were anxious to be reunited for weeks."

"That's a pretty good summary," Owen agreed through a dry throat, as his eyes drank in the full sight of Margarry for the first time since he had figured out that he was in love with her. Mithros, she was even prettier than his best daydreams of her. Yes, her face was still too thin and angular for court standards of beauty, but when she grinned or laughed it softened enough that Owen couldn't imagine anyone calling it less than lovely. Sure, her eyes were a relatively common shade of brown reminiscent of decaying autumn leaves, but it wasn't the hue that was important—it was intelligence and wry humor sparkling in them that were the real windows into her soul, which he cherished as much as his own.

"Well, you've seen me now and heard me speak," Margarry finished, wiping away an invisible speck of dirt from her periwinkle gown and twisting off a petal of a lilac she had woven through the braided crown she had fixed her hair in. Realizing that she had probably gone to considerable trouble to make herself attractive to him, he gulped and wished that he wasn't wearing sweaty clothes from a practice bout. "Tell me. Was it true love or just an illusion that you felt?"

Looking at her, Owen knew with a certainty that gutted him as effectively as any dagger that it hadn't been merely an illusion that he had felt. No, he honestly loved her. There was no other explanation for the fire that raged in his bloodstream whenever he so much as thought about her. There was no other reason for the shock that always coursed through him whenever he so much as brushed fingertips with her. There was no other explanation for his desire to spill out his whole soul to her and his simultaneous struggles to construct coherent sentences. There was no other reason why he was convinced that he could fly whenever she was beside him, even though his feet seemed to be built from lead. There was no other explanation for the fact that he both wanted to get as close to her as possible and flee from her as quickly as possible whenever he caught sight of her.

Yes, there was no denying that he loved her. She was his ultimate temptation and his better half. She was his greatest strength and his biggest weakness. She was his salvation and his damnation. Most likely, there were a thousand words that he could have used to explain this to her, but none of them sprang to his mind. Besides, words were never as good as deeds. As far as he was concerned, right now, there was only one way to reassure her that he genuinely loved her and would forever.

Before any part of him could stop himself, he closed the distance between them and kissed her. When their lips met, Owen was flooded with a peculiar sense of arriving at a home buried deep inside himself. He knew in the best, most magical, way that Margarry was not only as vital to his survival as the air he breathed but that she was a part of him, had been before he had even been introduced to her, and would continue to be with him forever. Judging by the fact that she made no attempt to pull away from him and didn't stiffen when he kissed her, Margarry experienced a similar sensation.

Owen had no idea how long the kiss lasted, because he was curiously located outside of time when his lips were locked with Margarry's, and he didn't care how long it was. It could have the duration of a second or an eternity, and it would make no difference to him. He was in love, and where love was, time had no sway.

After however long it was, when they were both out of breath, they separated at the same time.

"It's no illusion for me." He grinned at her, still breathless and flushed. "What about you?"

"It must be real," she informed him, beaming. "After all, a nobleman's kiss is supposed to break every spell an evil sorcerer could place on a damsel."

"How did you know I was here, anyway?" he asked.

"I could claim that I am so connected with you that I knew that you couldn't be anywhere but here," observed Margarry, her eyes gleaming. "However, that's not true. What really happened is that Father decided to drop by Mother's room while I was visiting with her, and he explained that he had just come from the stables where he had given Blaze to 'that incorrigible young man.' Of course, that required some extrapolation on my part, but it appears that I reached the proper conclusion. Interestingly enough, you have been promoted from impossible to incorrigible since you first came to Cavall."

"That's probably more of a demotion than a promotion." Owen shrugged. Wishing he felt remorseful and knowing fully well that he never would feel the guilt he probably ought to have, he admitted, "I am incorrigible. After all, as soon as he leaves the stables, I set to work seducing his daughter."

"I take issue to that." Margarry elbowed him in the ribs. "I think it is clear, Owen, that I have put far more effort into seducing you than you have into seducing me, and I resent you taking credit for my hard work."

"Be sure to take full credit for your hard work if your father ever hears about this scene," Owen advised her. "You might just save my neck if you do that."

"Of course I'll take credit for my feminine wiles," snorted Margarry. "How else would I remind Father that I am the most impossible and incorrigible daughter in the history of civilization?"

Before Owen could reply, she added, scooping up a wicker picnic basket that she must have placed on the floor before she had walked over to him, "Oh, and speaking of Father finding out about this scene, we should probably get out of the stables soon. You see, I suggested that Father and Mother take a nice ride together this afternoon because they so rarely get to be alone with each other, while I went off to see a companion of mine. Things would get a wee bit awkward if they were to discover that the companion I was referring to was you. Come on. As long as we stay away from the horse paths, we should be free of their interference."

Noting inwardly that awkward would be the understatement of the year if Margarry's parents discovered that it was him she had been running off to meet, Owen hurried out of the stables alongside her.

Once they had left the stable a safe distance behind them, they both visibly relaxed, and slowed their pace to a stroll. After a few more minutes of leisurely walking, they had passed many of the crowds of nobles flocking the green grounds. Now that they had ensured that they would have some privacy, they settled themselves under a sycamore tree and devoted themselves to eating the lunch that Margarry had brought.

"Praise the Goddess for kitchenhands," remarked Margarry between bites of melon. "They can have a picnic prepared in a snap of fingers. When we have kitchenhands, I seriously don't understand why they hammered so much about cooking into us at the convent. What a waste of time and effort. Good thing I didn't pay too much attention in those classes, anyway."

"Half the stuff that our teachers pound into our heads is useless and is only meant to keep us from plotting mischief in our free time," Owen said, articulating a theory he had formulated throughout his page years. Then, studying the slice of melon he was consuming, he muttered, "No wonder this tastes so good if you had nothing to do with its preparation."

"You don't cook melons," scowled Margarry. "Besides, even I'm not capable of ruining melons, although many a priestess can attest that I did my honest best to do so."

"You aren't that bad a cook," Owen reassured her to compensate for mocking her in the first place. "The nuts you sent me were quite tasty. Happy was particularly fond of them."

"Thanks." Margarry wrinkled her nose. "That would be about the limit of my culinary prowess, though."

Silence fell between them for a minute, as the two of them started in on the chicken pie that the servants had packed for them. Then, Margarry commented abruptly, "There have been rumors circulating about you and some of your friends recently, you know. I may have only been here since this morning, but already I've heard my fair share."

"Do you listen to rumors about me, then?" Owen raised his eyebrows.

"You'd have to be deaf or dead not to hear these," returned Margarry, unfazed. "Anyway, I might have listened to them, but I won't believe them until you tell me they're true―or not."

"In order for me to do that, you have to shed some light on what these mysterious rumors are," he pointed out, although he had the strong suspicion that they were related to his experiences in Scanra.

"I have the feeling that you know what I'm talking about, but I'll humor you." Margarry's eyes locked on his. "I'm referring to the rumors about you and your friends sneaking into Scanra on an undercover mission, and killing Blayce and Stenmun. Understandably, I'm wondering if the reason you couldn't write to me for awhile was because you were busy in Scanra."

"Well, in this case, the rumors are half true, which makes them more factual than most of the stories circling court," Owen grumbled, stalling. The truth was the idea of explaining what he had done to Margarry terrified him. What if she fled from him in disgust, screaming that she couldn't be involved with a traitor? Yet, how could he engage in a relationship with her and not tell her the truth about Scanra?

"Owen?" Margarry pressed, squeezing his hand and showing him that his answer was taking too long.

"I did travel behind enemy lines with my friends, and we did dispose of Blayce and Stenmun." Owen decided to get the easy part over with, and then burst out with the bad news, as though speed would make it less difficult for both of them to handle, "However, it wasn't an undercover mission; it was treason. Everyone is supposed to think that it was authorized, so my friends and I don't have to die, but it wasn't. I know that I'm supposed to do my part in keeping up the lie, but I can't lie to you, especially not about this."

"It's not treason unless you're tried and convicted of it," Margarry countered fiercely. Obviously, she didn't want to see him as a traitor anymore than he wished to perceive himself as one.

"Maybe if you're a magistrate or an advocate." Owen shook his head glumly. "If you're a person like me, you know that when you disappeared behind enemy lines on your covert operation that you were committing what the law would define as treason, and that makes you a traitor no matter what anyone says on the contrary."

"You thought you were doing the right thing, though, when you committed treason, didn't you?" Margarry cocked her head and narrowed her eyes as she scrutinized him.

"Of course I did!" Owen exclaimed, miffed that she would even entertain the notion that he would commit treason out of maliciousness. "I'd never have done it otherwise, and I didn't just think I was doing the right thing—I _was_ doing the right thing."

"When Blayce and Stenmun are corpses, I guess it's hard to argue that you were wrong," Margarry smirked. A second later, the smirk vanished, and she observed softly, "Well, as long as you thought you were doing the right thing, that's all that really matters, I suppose."

"That's all you're going to say?" Owen gawked at her. "You aren't going to even interrogate me about my reasons for committing treason to ensure that they're good ones?"

"Of course I'm not going to interrogate you." Now, it was Margarry's turn to be offended. "I'll leave the interrogations to Father, and, since your explanations worked with him even though his attitude tends to be that explanations are barely less reprehensible than excuses, I reckon that they'd be good enough to satisfy me, especially since love is blind."

Here, Margarry leaned her head against his shoulder, so that her hair tickled his cheek, and the scent of rosewater and lilacs made him feel lightheaded. "Owen, I don't want to be a cause of stress in your life. I love you, and all I want to be is a source of joy and support for you. I don't even care how weak that sounds, because it will make the two of us happy, and that's all that matters really."

"You're displaying a tremendous amount of faith in me, considering that you insist that you are a cynic," chuckled Owen, stroking her smooth cheek.

"Oh, I am a cynic," she responded rapidly, trailing her fingers along his face. The sensation made him feel simultaneously edgy and more comfortable than he had ever been in his life. "That is, I have very low expectations of humanity as a whole so that I won't become too depressed by the foolishness and casual cruelty all too prevalent among people. However, while I have little to no faith in humanity as a group, I have great faith in the individual—or, to be precise, in certain individuals, like you."

"What happens if someone you trust disappoints you?" Owen wanted to know.

"Then I look like an idiot, and become a little more bitter and soulless," laughed Margarry. Then, she stopped when her fingers rubbed across his new scar, and she gasped, "Getting this must have hurt."

"It wasn't too terrible," he said flippantly, even though he was pleased that she had noticed. It would prove to her that he was brave and strong.

"Men." Exasperated, Margarry rolled her eyes. "You're always insisting as blood pours from a fatal wound that you aren't injured at all."

"This one wasn't fatal," he reminded her.

"Indeed, and I imagine there's quite a story behind it."

"I got it in Scanra." For some reason, although he was accustomed to sharing everything that occurred in his life with her, he found that he was reluctant to discuss his experiences in Scanra with her. As far as he was concerned, what happened couldn't be understood by anyone who wasn't present in Scanra with Kel, and so talking about it to someone outside that select group would be like attempting to describe color to a blind man.

"I imagine that the whole time in Scanra made for quite a story," murmured Margarry. "Would you like to talk about it?"

"No." Owen shook his head fervently. It was blasphemy to think of ruining such a bright, sunny day with a tale of darkness and savagery. He could not describe to her the scent of rotting flesh and Stormwings while the air around them was perfumed by her lilacs and rosewater. While the wind rustled the leaves above them, he could not talk about corpses strung up in trees. With her head resting against his shoulder, he could not mention the bloody backs of the refugees. When they were picnicking together, he couldn't bring up the poverty and hunger he had seen in the Scanran village. While their hearts beat out a vibrant testimony to the life thudding through them both, how could he speak of death? With him at his most affectionate, how could he admit to spitting on Blayce and Stenmun when they were killed? "Thank you for the offer, but I don't want to talk about it, Margarry."

"I understand," Margarry whispered in his ear, and thoughts of Scanra were blown out of his mind, "but if you ever want to discuss what happened, I'll listen."

"I know," he replied simply, because he had never doubted that. Then, he decided that they had done enough talking and brought his lips to hers before she could say anything else.


	38. Chapter 38

Messages and Forgiveness

While he was at Egremont Castle, Owen's days quickly fell into a routine that was mostly pleasant. His mornings were spent in combat training with Lord Wyldon, which he rather enjoyed no matter how exhausting it was, because he could see the progress he was making and because, even though he knew his friends would never believe him, training alone with Wyldon wasn't a nightmare. Sure, his knightmaster would never be as patient or as mild-tempered as someone like Lord Raoul, but in an individual setting, he really did listen to and try to understand Owen.

After they were done training, Wyldon would grant him the afternoons off. Whenever she could, Margarry would sneak off to meet him for horse rides and picnics on the grounds, and the idyllic summer weather combined with the laughter and secrets they shared convinced Owen that during those afternoons he was enjoying a sliver of the best the Divine Realms had to offer while he was still alive.

On those days when Margarry could not sneak off, Owen would spend his free time with his friends among the squires, or with Kel and Neal, although he had noticed that Kel was more difficult to find outside the company of Dom lately. Remembering with a jolt how a similar thing had happened with Cleon, Owen realized with some astonishment that Kel was indeed a girl, even if she acted like one of the boys most of the time.

Still, no matter how uncomfortable the blossoming romance that may or may not have existed between Kel and Dom sometimes made him, the only really unpleasant moments at Egremont Castle involved dealing with Oakbridge and serving at parties. Therefore, Owen was rather upset when the day of Roald and Shinkokami's wedding arrived, even though he was glad that Roald would finally be married to the woman he loved, because it meant that this blissful interlude in his life would be over in three short days.

During the ceremony, Owen tried to pay attention out of a sense of loyalty to Roald, who had been his page sponsor and had been in his circle of friends since then. The fact that Princes Liam and Jasson, who were Owen's age and a year younger, both played a relatively prominent role in the proceedings should have functioned as an added attraction.

Despite all of this, Owen still found his mind wandering during the Mithran priest's sermon. Part of the problem, of course, was the acoustics of the cathedral, which ensured that Owen, who was seated near the rear, only heard a hollow echo of what seemed like every other sentence the priest uttered. Under such circumstances, it required a diligent effort to follow even a quarter of what the priest was babbling on about, and Owen rapidly lost interest in doing so when he discovered that the priest was determined to turn the sacred rite of marriage into a common business transaction full of mutual obligations. In the priest's skilled hands, the magic of love was reduced to something as dry as a trigonometry equation. Listening to the priest, and thinking of how Margarry's tongue danced inside his mouth sometimes and of how his tickled the inside of hers, Owen had to pity the priest for never being able to sample such passions, and for being forced to teach others about something he didn't comprehend himself.

Given how dull the sermon was, it wasn't surprising that within ten minutes of its opening, Owen was staring blankly at the lurid depictions of wicked people suffering torments in the afterlife. Looking at the mute screamers on the wall, Owen wondered if any of them were being punished for daydreaming during wedding ceremonies.

Before he could arrive at a satisfactory answer to this riddle, Roald and Shinko had finished exchanging vows, and, after that, Owen didn't have a moment to idle until well after midnight, when the frenzied celebrations finally ended for that day.

Owen might have risked Wyldon's anger by sleeping late if it hadn't been for the wretched songbirds that awoke him at dawn. Cursing the evil creatures and asking himself how Kel could tolerate having a flock of sparrows for pets, he rose and dressed.

"Take this to Lord Matthias of Nond," Lord Wyldon ordered the instant he laid eyes on his squire, thrusting a note into his hands. As usual, he did not waste any time on pleasantries, which was just as well, because it saved Owen from the necessity of pretending it was a good morning.

"Is he awake, my lord?" asked Owen, eyeing his knightmaster dubiously. As far as he was concerned, except for the servants, he and Wyldon were probably the only beings awake in the whole castle, and he would have been asleep if it hadn't been for the horrid songbirds.

"Of course he's awake," Wyldon informed him, his lips twitching wryly. "My friend is what you might term an insomniac. It is unlikely that he will get more than three hours of sleep on a good night, and the second that the sun starts to rise, he wakes up because the light bothers him. The reason he is so addicted to tea is that it keeps him alert."

"Oh," was all Owen could think to say. He had noticed Lord Matthias' odd habit of drinking tea regularly even though they were in a sweltering desert while they were on the royal progress, but he hadn't dared to inquire about it. Not only had that seemed rude even to him, but he figured that everyone was entitled to a few harmless quirks. In fact, Owen had sometimes thought that if tea made Lord Matthias happy, Wyldon should probably try it more often and see if it lightened his spirits.

"Go now." Wyldon waved a hand at the door, and Owen obediently bowed and left.

As he navigated his way through the empty corridors, he thought that his hypothesis that most of the castle's inhabitants were still abed was correct. When he reached Lord Matthias' quarters, he asked Matthias' manservant, "Is your master awake?"

In response, the manservant nodded and led him into Matthias' study.

"Good morning, Squire Owen." Matthias, his palms wrapped about a steaming mug of tea, glanced up from a map of the Scanran border as Owen entered. "You must have grown a foot since I saw you last."

"Thank you, sir." Owen grinned, although he knew that he had to have grown less than half a foot in that time.

"So, tell me what I can do for you," said Matthias, sipping at his drink.

"My lord asked me to give this to you, sir," Owen explained, holding out Wyldon's letter.

Matthias took the proffered parchment and slit it open. As he read, his forehead furrowed for a moment. Then, it smoothed out, and he instructed Owen, "Kindly tell your knightmaster that I would be honored to accept his invitation and that I am greatly offended that he felt the need to ask at all."

"Yes, sir." Owen bowed and left, observing inwardly that Matthias was probably one of the few people in Tortall who could get away with teasing Lord Wyldon.

As he headed off to deliver Matthias' reply to Wyldon, Owen assumed that the hallways would be as empty as they had been earlier. However, he had just rounded the corner onto the next corridor when he almost rammed into a raven-haired nobleman with a peg leg. The man smelled so strongly of alcohol that Owen had to fight the overwhelming urge to gag, and, as far as he was concerned, it was really much too early for the man to be clutching the wine glass he had almost dumped all over Owen.

"Sorry, sir," Owen muttered, moving around the intoxicated nobleman and starting down the hallway again.

Unfortunately, he was halted when the man clamped a hand around his upper arm. "You should watch where you're going," he growled, fixing a bleary midnight blue glare upon Owen. His lips burning, Owen bit back a retort that nobody could see around a blind corner and that the nobleman was as much at fault for the near collision as he was. "You're Wyldon's squire, aren't you?"

"Yes, I am," answered Owen in a clipped voice, sticking his chin out defiantly, because the man had posed the question as though it were a bad thing when it most certainly wasn't. As he spoke, he yanked his arm out of the man's grasp. Even cheerful drunks, like his father, made him uneasy, since he could see that it was the alcohol, and not them, that was in control, but a belligerent drunk like this man was even worse.

"Humph," the man snorted. "I'm Sir Bevin. Did your knightmaster ever mention me?"

"I know of you." Owen eyed Bevin contemptuously, deciding not to state that most of his information had come from Quinton and Margarry rather than from Wyldon. "I know how you came to be injured because you had too much to drink. I know how Lord Wyldon took pity on you and gave you his oldest daughter's hand in marriage to comfort you. I know how you repaid him by abusing her."

"You know Wyldon's side of the story, obviously," sneered Bevin, gulping down his wine. "Clearly, it never entered your mind that the wench was mine to do with as I wanted once I married her. She wasn't his anymore; she was mine. Wyldon had no right to steal her from me."

Sickened by Bevin's complete lack of remorse for beating Anwen and his conviction that he had owned his wife the way one might own a horse, Owen could only gawk at the man, appalled that someone who so conspicuously lacked chivalry would have the gumption to call himself a knight.

"Of course, that's typical of Wyldon's treatment of me," Bevin went on, and Owen was astonished by the bitterness flooding the man's tone. Spotting the expression on Owen's face, Bevin smirked, "Come, come, boy. There's no need to look so amazed. I was his squire, too, so I know what you suffer every day. I know how you have to endure his constant lectures on your every little mistake. I know what you wait for—his approval and his trust. I know how he wraps himself in a sheet of ice and locks both away from you. I know how the more you strive to please him, the farther away he slips."

"Perhaps you just didn't give him reason to praise you," Owen volleyed back, thinking that Wyldon's compliments might have been rare, but they weren't nonexistent and at least they meant something when they came. "Besides, he obviously trusted you, since he gave you his daughter in marriage. That's when you betrayed him, and a betrayal can't exist without trust."

"That's what he'd want you to think," leered Bevin. "He would want you to see him as the victim, rather than me. After all, if you viewed me as the victim, you might start thinking that he is the worst sort of knightmaster. You might begin contemplating how much he demands from you, and how much he denies you."

"He denies me nothing," snapped Owen, his gray eyes blazing. "He just gave me a new horse."

"Believe what you want, boy." Bevin's lips curled derisively. "Don't be surprised, though, when he abandons you after he has sapped everything he can from you."

Before Owen could retort, Bevin, squeezing his wine glass tightly, lurched away. Scowling and trembling with ire, Owen spun on his heel and marched back to the rooms he shared with Lord Wyldon.

"Lord Matthias says that he would be honored to accept your invitation, my lord, and that he is greatly offended that you felt you needed to ask," Owen announced, as he entered and Wyldon directed an inquiring look at him.

"I have no doubt he would be more miffed at me if I didn't ask him, and just assumed he would do it," muttered Wyldon. Then, he added, "You could look happier, you know. I just got a second knight to advise you during your Ordeal."

Reeling from the notion that the thought of his Ordeal was meant to cheer him up, Owen made no reply. It was more than a tad unnerving that Wyldon was already preparing for his part in the ritual, although Owen supposed that he shouldn't have been so alarmed. After all, Wyldon liked to finish things as soon as possible, so finding a second knight for the Midwinter rite any time after midsummer would probably have seemed entirely too haphazard to him.

Perhaps at another time Owen might have felt relieved that the second knight who would be advising him would be someone he was familiar with and liked well enough. Right now, though, Bevin had soured his mood enough that there really was no room for upbeat thoughts of any sort.

"Why don't you tell me why you look like you're carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders all the sudden?" Wyldon sighed, leaning back in his chair and studying Owen owlishly.

"It would only anger you, sir." Owen shook his head. He remembered quite plainly how almost all of Wyldon most terrifying moments of rage occurred whenever something that reminded him of Bevin transpired. Therefore, his survival instincts screamed at him not to share Bevin's incendiary words with his knightmaster. After all, if the words riled Owen, they might make Wyldon apoplectic. Besides, Owen sensed that Bevin's comments would hurt Wyldon, and he didn't want to be a cause, however indirect, of anguish for his knightmaster.

"Perhaps it will. However, I assure you that I will be able to cope with anything that you might have to tell me." Unfazed, Wyldon shrugged. "Whatever it is you've done, you might as well inform me of it now. I'll only be angrier if I hear it from someone else."

"I didn't do anything," protested Owen indignantly. "Bevin did. He's the problem, not me!"

As soon as he realized what he had said, he clapped a hand over his mouth in horror, and cursed himself inwardly for having no control over his tongue the second that his sense of justice was trespassed upon. Wonderful. He had revealed the very thing he had been aiming to conceal from Wyldon. Oh, it was a shame he hadn't become a spy, given the fact that subtlety was his middle name.

Before he could attempt to change the topic, Wyldon demanded in a flat voice, "What has been Bevin up to now?"

"He stopped me in the corridor on the way back from Lord Matthias'. He said—well, he said all sorts of nasty things about you, my lord," Owen burst out, the story pouring from him before he could plug the floodgates. "He said that you were a dreadful knightmaster to him. He said that you lectured him constantly, and that all he ever wanted was his trust and approval, but you deprived him of both. He said that you demanded everything of him and denied him everything."

"Of course he did." Wyldon sounded disgusted. "Bevin's life is one gigantic pity party that he is throwing for himself. I shall not hide from you the fact that I have little patience for his tendency to complain about how hard I was on him to anybody who will listen when Mindelan, whom I put upon probation, doesn't go around sniveling about how difficult I was on her."

Here, Owen gaped at his knightmaster. That was the closest that he could recall the older man coming to confessing that the probation he had placed upon Kel the year before Owen had met her was unfair. Somehow, although he had envisioned that it would be reassuring to hear Wyldon admit that he was wrong in this matter, he found it oddly disconcerting. Even though there were occasions when he was convinced that Wyldon was incorrect and even though Wyldon had apologized to him twice, Owen still felt a weird flash of betrayal whenever the uncompromising man confessed that he was in the wrong. In a way, it was as though a giant of Owen's childhood changed into a pygmy whenever it happened.

"Speak or close your mouth, Squire," Wyldon chided him. "Looking at someone with your jaw hanging open isn't just impolite. It also makes you appear stupid."

"You never wanted to discuss Bevin with me before, sir," he stuttered, electing to speak. That was certainly true and in its own manner as astonishing as Wyldon's hint that he had been wrong to place Kel on probation. After all, Wyldon had always brushed off the subject of his former squire whenever it was mentioned. Normally, he treated Bevin's name as though it were a deadly disease that must be quarantined. In the past, he had deflected Owen's questions about Bevin and had been furious to hear that Quinton had told Owen about Bevin.

"You're right. I haven't." As he established as much, Wyldon stared at the wall behind Owen. Then, his gaze cleared, and he waved his hand at the chair across the desk from him, ordering, "Bring that around and sit beside me."

Once Owen had complied, Wyldon paused before continuing, "The subject of Bevin and everything related to him is one that I refrain from talking about with most people. For awhile, that included you, Owen. As far as I was concerned, Bevin was in the past, and you were in the present. In my mind, there was no need for your two worlds to collide, but I should have realized earlier that the past is forever impacting the present. Indeed, no matter how much I told myself when I first asked you to be my squire that I wouldn't permit my experiences with Bevin to cloud my relationship with you, he's always hovered in the shadows. He's the reason why I would sometimes be harder on you than I should have been, because you would say or do something so reminiscent of Bevin that it would feel like a slap in the face, and I would decide that I had to stomp that behavior out of you. In short, even if Bevin hadn't stopped you in the hallway and accosted you with his tale of woe, he would have succeeded in wedging himself into our relationship. I imagine the thought would bring him considerable glee. After all, since he has managed to convince himself that I have ruined his life, he has taken a perverse pleasure in destroying the lives of innocent people close to me, so it would delight him to know that he had hurt you."

"He hasn't hurt me, he definitely hasn't ruined my life, and he hasn't wedged himself between us," Owen countered fiercely. "I don't intend to give him the power to do any of that, my lord. In the corridor, I told him that he was wrong on every count—that you didn't praise him because he didn't deserve it and that he had your trust since he ended up abusing it. When he suggested that you demanded everything of me and denied me of everything like he thought you did to him, I told him you denied me nothing and that you had just given me a new horse." Hit by a sudden sensation of guilt, he looked down and mumbled, "I didn't tell him that I had betrayed you, too, though."

"We've put the Scanran affair behind us, Owen." When Wyldon smacked his knee briskly, Owen determined that it was safe to glance up again. "I have chosen to regard it as an expression of your fidelity to Keladry rather than a display of disloyalty to me."

For a few seconds, there was silence as Owen mentally thanked his knightmaster for what must have been the thousandth time for being so understanding about the whole Scanran jaunt. Then, he pressed, "Sir, why don't you challenge Bevin to a joust? That would prevent him from spewing any more venom about you. I was tempted to challenge him in the hallway myself, but I didn't, because that was when I didn't want you to find out about the conversation I had with him."

"Owen, what satisfaction could I possibly derive from defeating Bevin in a joust?" Wyldon shook his head, and Owen was stunned by the bleakness in his knightmaster's gaze. "I am perfectly aware that, as out of practice as he is, I can send him flying halfway to the Yamani Islands without breaking a sweat. So is he, which is why, for all his grumbling about me, he has never challenged me. Beating him would just increase his feeling that I had devoted myself to making his life miserable, and I will not indulge his obsession with theatrics. Besides, no matter how much of a monster he is now, Bevin was my squire. Out of the memory of the eager, talented boy I once knew, I can't humiliate him in such a fashion. When I think of the agony that he was in after he lost his leg, I can't bring myself to cause him any more pain."

"So, you'll just let him get away with insulting you?" Owen blinked. "My lord, he has to recognize by now that you won't challenge him. That's why he dares to say what he does."

"I let him get away with nothing," snapped Wyldon, his brown eyes burning. More mildly, he explained, "The truth, not gossip, is what's important to me. Those who believe Bevin's story don't know the facts behind our failing-out, and, thus, their opinion doesn't make a difference to me."

"I thought a good joust could solve everything," Owen grumbled, reflecting on how many knights had ceased making withering remarks about Kel once she had proven her skill in tournaments.

"They don't when those who disagree with you can always claim that you won because you are a brute, and not because you are in the right," observed Wyldon grimly. His eyes shadowed, he shook his head and added, "Anyway, there are some wrongs that can never be compensated for with jousting. Bevin's abuse of my daughter is among them. In fact, even if he were to seek forgiveness from me for beating my child, I will never forgive him for it any more than I will forgive myself for failing to protect my little girl. Knights are sworn to temper justice with mercy, Squire, but I cannot find it in me to pardon Bevin."

"Only the gods could forgive Bevin," responded Owen, trying to comfort his knightmaster, whom he was sure was being too harsh on himself. "Probably even they can't, sir. To earn the gods' clemency, they say that you've not only got to ask for it, but you must show a genuine sense of guilt and desire to atone for your sins in the future. From what he said about your daughter in the corridor, he felt no remorse for what he did, and no compulsion to redeem himself."

"For the sake of his soul, I hope that Bevin changes his mind before he appears in the Black God's court, because I have enough sympathy for his suffering after losing his leg not to wish an eternity of misery upon him," Lord Wyldon sighed, staring at the wall again. "However, I think you are mistaken that only a god could forgive Bevin. After all, Anwen, who is perhaps a holier, nobler, and stronger person than I will ever be, has already forgiven him. When my wife and I uncovered what he was doing to her, all she said was that she deserved to be hit, because she couldn't make his pain disappear. While she was being beaten, all she was worried about was the agony her abuser was in. She poured so much of herself into others that she ended up as nothing more than a shell. Few of us can claim to be that pure of spirit."

Listening to this, Owen discovered that his brain had gone numb. In his opinion, Wyldon was one of the toughest beings in Tortall, and, as such, the notion that he would perceive Anwen as stronger was stupefying. After all, Owen had always regarded Anwen as a delicate, sweet creature who had shattered upon her first encounter with the cruelties of the world. In short, while he had felt nothing but contempt for Bevin for abusing her, he had also perceived Anwen as weak for failing to fight back. Now, he had to face the uncomfortable prospect that perhaps it took at least as much courage to refrain from punching back. Yet…

"My lord, no matter how many times he beat Anwen, Bevin wasn't going to feel any better," Owen pointed out heatedly, because this topic was starting to remind him of the hazing that occurred in the pages' wing. "Besides, nobody should have to go through life being somebody else's punching bag."

"That's why I had Anwen divorce Bevin." Wyldon glared at Owen, as if he thought that his squire underestimated how seriously he took what happened to his child. "A man who beats his wife doesn't deserve her, especially not if she is as good a woman as my daughter. Of course, the fact that I managed to raise a squire who deemed violence against women as an acceptable practice to engage in will shame me forever."

"Some people are born evil," Owen answered, remembering Joren and Vinson. "You can't blame yourself for every flaw in your students, sir."

"Yes, I can," Lord Wyldon informed him shortly, "or at least I can for the major ones. It's my job to hammer out those faults, and as many of the minor ones as I can."

"Some people can't be made good, my lord," insisted Owen, thinking of Blayce and Stenmun. "Some people love nothing more than being wicked, and so they'll always be evil."

"Bevin wasn't born evil, Owen," Lord Wyldon stated softly, and Owen had to admit that Quinton would probably have never liked Bevin if he had been. "He was determined before life transformed it into adamantine cruelty, he was brave before he lost his leg, and he was funny before broken dreams turned him bitter. As a squire, he was ambitious, he had an explosive temper, and he had a horrible habit of getting drunk. On a whole, however, many knightmasters have dealt with much worse throughout the centuries, and the good outweighed the bad in him. It must have been my training that eventually permitted the bad to overcome the good."

"He was old enough to make his own decisions." Owen shook his head stubbornly. "Just because he chose incorrectly, that doesn't make you responsible for his actions."

"Perhaps." Meditatively, Wyldon scratched at the arm the hurrock had attacked. "You're resolved to defend me from myself, I see. I can't say that I'm surprised, given that you seem to have set me up on a pedestal."

"I know you're human," frowned Owen. Normally, Wyldon scolded him for a lack of respect, and now he was being taken to task for an excess of it. Life was so bewildering, especially when his knightmaster was involved. "I'm aware that you can be wrong. For instance, now I think that you're wrong about being wrong with Bevin. Besides, you're always cross at me for not showing you enough respect, and now you want me to show you less of it. That makes no sense, sir."

"You should respect me. In fact, you should respect all your instructors for being willing to take the time to teach you," replied Wyldon. Quiet fell between them for a moment, and then he sighed, "Everyone talks about how difficult knightmasters are on their squires; nobody ever mentions how hard squires are on their knightmasters."

"I don't mean to argue with you that much, my lord." Flushing, Owen ducked his head. Sometimes, he wished he was less stubborn, and this was one of those occasions.

"For once, I wasn't referring to your frightfully headstrong nature."At this revelation, Owen dared to tilt his face up again in time to hear more shocking information from his knightmaster. "No, I was referring to the fact that every squire is constantly watching their knightmaster's behavior and judging it. I'm speaking of the fact that every knightmaster knows that he ought to be an example of a perfect knight for his squire, and every knightmaster realizes that he falls short of that. Until you have a squire of your own, you won't understand how much it hurts to recognize that you aren't the man your squire believes you to be."

"I don't care what you say." Owen folded his arms across his chest and lifted his chin. "Just about everything I know about being a knight, I learned from you, and no matter what you think right now, sir, that's a good thing. I'll probably never be as great a knight as you are, but just trying to be will make me a better one."

"You say that because you are my squire," declared Wyldon, resting his hands on Owen's shoulders. "The curse of the squire is that he will always feel inferior to his knightmaster."

"Then squires have it every bit as bad as knightmasters do, my lord," Owen mumbled.

"No, because until you are a knightmaster, you will only feel like a single failure, not a double one." Smiling crookedly, Wyldon released Owen. "When you have your own squire, you'll understand what I mean exactly."

"After this conversation, I'm not ever taking a squire," pronounced Owen firmly. Judging by Wyldon's words, he'd probably be doing the theoretical squire a favor by not accepting him, anyway.

"Oh, you'll take a squire." A rare glint of humor flashed abruptly in Wyldon's eyes. "I know you, Owen. You'd get lonely without one, and, however vexing they can be, squires do make excellent company. Now, we've spent more than enough time philosophizing. Let's see if we can still use our weapons after all this sitting around."


	39. Chapter 39

Charity and Safety

"Tomorrow is our last day together," sighed Margarry, snaking out a hand and picking a dandelion. With a dreamy expression on her face, she closed her eyes and blew on it. Watching the petals dance in the breeze and familiar with at least the basics of flower lore, Owen asked himself what she could possibly have wished for.

Looking at her as her eyes slid open again, he could only hope that she hadn't wished for them to have more time together here, because he knew that two mornings hence he would be leaving with Wyldon. His knightmaster had decided shortly after their arrival that they would depart three days after Roald and Shinkokami's wedding. Once Wyldon had made up his mind, nothing short of a royal command, which was highly unlikely to be issued in this instance, was likely to alter it.

"We'll just have to make the time count as best as we can," Owen informed her, leaning over and kissing her, so that she could feel that he didn't want to leave any more than she wished him to.

"I have a special plan for us to do tomorrow," murmured Margarry once the kiss ended, stroking his cheek.

"What special plan would that be?" Owen asked. Then, as a sudden thought occurred to him, he added in a rush, "Of course, if it's a surprise, you don't have to tell me now."

"It's not a surprise." Margarry shook her head, and then it was her chance to have words tumbling out of her mouth, as she went on, "Owen, I want you to take me to see the refugee camp that's not far from here, so I can deliver some blankets and clothes that I sewed for the refugees."

For a moment, Owen gawked at her, convinced that he had misheard. While he was aware that a refugee camp similar to the one that Kel ran was stationed less than half a day's ride from Egremont Castle, it might have been located on the other side of the Emerald Ocean for all the thought he had given it over the last couple of days. As shameful as it sounded, he had allowed himself to be caught up in the whirlwind of balls and parties enough to forget about the harsh conditions that the refugees were forced to live in. Certainly, it had never entered his mind that he would take Margarry to a refugee camp. After all, of all the places for a romantic tryst, that was probably the least common location.

"Did you ask your father for permission to go?" he inquired, imagining that Lord Wyldon would be far from enthusiastic about the prospect of his youngest daughter visiting a refugee camp.

"Yes." Due to Margarry's heavy tone, Owen was hardly astonished when she admitted, "He said that when Carthak froze over I could visit a refugee camp."

"There's your answer, then," Owen answered, relieved that he didn't have to be the villain in this scenario. Truth be told, he wasn't delighted by the notion of Margarry traveling to a refugee camp. Something inside him revolted when he pictured her walking into the odiferous, crammed refugee barracks. He didn't want to witness her mouth falling open in horror when she rested her eyes on the gaunt faces and bodies so thin that ribs could be seen through the rags that served the refugees for clothes. When it came down to it, he longed to keep all the terrors of this world at bay for her in a way that his father had never been able to do for his mother. Somehow, he knew that as long as she was safe, he could deal with anything that the world threw at him.

"No, it's not," Margarry snapped, her palm flying away from his cheek and her brown eyes searing him.

"Yes, it is," insisted Owen, trying and failing not to match her heat with his own. "Maybe you think that you can defy Lord Wyldon whenever it suits you, but I can't. Perhaps because he's your father you can escape his wrath unscathed, but I don't have the same privilege. I'm his squire, and if I take his child to see something that he has forbidden, he'll kill me. If I'm lucky, he'll do it quickly."

"Oh, you'll risk disobeying Father when Keladry of Mindelan is involved," Margarry retorted, and, suddenly, she appeared every inch as menacing as Lord Wyldon in a towering temper. This realization made Owen understand at last that falling in love with his knightmaster's daughter might have been the most idiotic thing that he had ever done, since it was the very definition of being trapped between a rock and a hard place. Yet, it wasn't as though he had any choice in the matter, he defended himself. Nobody could control whom they fell in love with. "You'll chance his disapproval and his ire for her sake, but not for mine. You'll even commit treason for her!"

"You don't know what you're talking about," he countered in his fiercest tone, his gray eyes blazing. "What you're referring to was a life-or-death situation not only for Kel but for a lot of other people; you visiting the refugees is hardly equal to that. Besides, I didn't commit treason just for Kel—I did it for a lot of other beings, too."

"Well, I guess I wouldn't know what you're talking about, would I?" Margarry emitted a bitter, hysterical rasp that was probably intended as a laugh. "After all, you refused to discuss the whole Scanran debacle with me, didn't you?"

"Funnily enough, I have a distinct memory of you telling me you were fine with that our first day here," he snarled. "Also, you didn't seem to regard it as such a debacle then, not when Blayce and Stenmun were dead as a result of it."

For a long moment, they said nothing to each other. Both of them were breathing harshly and glowering at each other. Beneath his anger, which he had never felt flare so hotly around Margarry before, Owen felt a stirring of pain. He couldn't bear to argue with the woman he loved like this, and, yet, he couldn't avoid it in this instance.

When he glimpsed the same roiling emotions bubbling in her eyes, the fury sailed out of him as rapidly as it had boiled up within him. Tentatively, he extended a hand and grasped hers. For a second, she attempted to pull out of his clasp. Then, she relented and permitted his palm to wrap around hers, although she made no movement to squeeze back as she normally would have.

"Margarry, I don't love Kel more than I do you, if that's what you're worried about," he remarked gently. "She's just a close friend. I care about her, yes, but in the way you love an old buddy or a sibling. I don't love her with the burning passion that I love you with, I never have, and I never will."

"You think that I'm jealous, do you?" Margarry stiffened and withdrew her hand from his.

Feeling that he couldn't win with Margarry any more than he could with Wyldon, Owen grumbled , "Well, to be honest, I don't see any other explanation, and since I'm not a mind-reader last time I checked, you should just tell me if there is one, so we don't have to keep arguing about something you aren't even really cross about."

"Maybe I am a bit jealous of Keladry of Mindelan," confessed Margarry, and Owen sighed in relief that she wasn't going to bark at him again. "It's hard not to be envious of a woman who can fight like she can. It's difficult not to be jealous of someone as strong as she is. It's a real challenge not to be envious of a girl who can stay on a horse in a joust against Father. In a comparison with her, it's hard not to feel like you come up short in every way, especially if you know that you aren't ladylike or pretty, either."

"You're pretty to me, and extremely beautiful women like the queen always just make me feel uneasy," Owen reassured her, grabbing her hand again, and this time, she squeezed back so tightly that he thought his fingers might fall off. "I don't mind that you aren't a perfect lady, and I couldn't have fallen in love with you if you were any more than you could have fallen in love with me if I were a perfect gentleman. I think you're the smartest girl I've ever met, and your sense of humor always makes me smile. You enjoy dogs and horses as much as I do or possibly even more. You're as stubborn and as argumentative as me if not more so, and I find that oddly attractive. I'd go on some more, but I'd be wasting my time trying to explain the unexplainable. Just don't ever doubt my love for you again, because even if it doesn't make sense to you, it's perfectly understandable to me."

"If you loved me so much, you'd take me to see the refugees." Margarry shot him a sidelong glance.

"Since I love you, I can't take you," corrected Owen. "I love you too much to put you through the pain of seeing the suffering those people are undergoing. I love you enough to wish to protect you from that."

"You sound just like Father," scowled Margarry. "You think because I'm a women, I'm weak and in need of protection. The desire to protect someone you perceive as inferior to yourself is certainly nobler than the decision to beat them up, but it's just as insulting. I can tolerate it from my father, since as my parent, he_ is_ superior to me; however, I don't have to accept it from you, Owen. You're my equal, not my superior. Don't ever forget that."

"I don't think you're weak, and I don't believe women are weak!" Owen exclaimed, eyeing her as if she were insane. "Mithros, one of my best friends is a lady knight. How could I possibly be friends with her and still think women are weak?"

"Do you typically think of her as a woman, then?" Margarry arched an eyebrow at him.

"No, I normally see her as just another one of the fellows," replied Owen, praying to any listening deity that Margarry wouldn't dissolve into another fit of envy. "She's gone through a lot of effort in order not to be perceived as a girl, and I figure that I should respect that."

"What if she wishes to be perceived as both a woman and a warrior?" Margarry wanted to know. "Why should being a warrior mean she has to surrender her identity as a woman?"

"She's not a normal girl," stuttered Owen, blinking swiftly. "She has to have recognized that by now."

"Of course she can't be like other girls, because other girls are weak," commented Margarry, her lips twisting. "As long as you stand there saying that one woman is strong because she isn't like other women, you're calling all girls weak."

"Well, when you see most girls crying over nothing, screaming at the sight of bugs, fainting in the heat, giggling at the stupidest things, and fretting over what they're going to wear to the next ball, the word weak does spring to mind," muttered Owen. "If a boy did that, I'd call him weak, too."

"Most girls behave like that because they were raised to act in that manner," Margarry scoffed. "They weren't born behaving like that any more than you were born practicing to be a knight."

"You don't act like that, and you were raised like they were," he reminded her.

"You're wrong." Margarry shook her head. "Oh, I was raised by very conservative parents, yes, but I didn't really have a typical upbringing. If I had, I might have ended up being as fashion-obsessed as Karina or as mild-mannered as Anwen. You see, after I was born, Father knew for certain that he would never have a son, and even though he always insists that it doesn't matter to him that he has all daughters, it obviously does. I think that's why he sometimes treated me as though I were a boy—spending hours in the stables and kennels with me. He doted on Anwen and Karina, but he never spent hours teaching them how to ride and care for horses, or showing them how to train dogs. That he reserved just for me, and I loved it, because I enjoyed being with him, since every little girl's first hero is her father. By the time Mother and Father thought to despair over how unladylike I was becoming, it was too late. I was already hopelessly ruined. Already, I preferred the kennels to the kitchen, and stables to sewing. I was unladylike, Owen, not because I was born with a weird genetic alteration that made me less female, but because I was raised like that by my conservative father."

"I see your point." Even though he wasn't confident that he comprehended everything that she was saying, Owen nodded his head. Then, picturing Margarry in the kennels and stables with her father, whom she focused adoring brown eyes upon, he asked softly, "Did you want to be a knight?"

"Owen, I never even considered the possibility of being a knight any more than you would have entertained the notion of studying to become a lady at the convent." As she established as much, Margarry let out a startled bark of amusement.

"Well, now that you are thinking about it, would you have wanted to be a knight?" pressed Owen.

"No," Margarry responded after a few seconds' hesitation. "As hard as it might be for you to imagine, I would much rather stay home with my books, horses, and dogs. After seeing the siege around the City of the Gods, I wish to stay away from war and violence. I only want to see the refugees because it is my duty to be charitable to them and because I suspect that they didn't wish their lives to be torn apart by warfare any more than the people in the City of the Gods did."

"We're back to the visit to the refugee camp," noted Owen, grimacing.

"Of course we are." Margarry's tone was steady. "I am not easily distracted. Now, I think you should see that as I am an intelligent person, I am capable of making my own choices, and that even if I make the wrong ones, I am strong enough to deal with the consequences. If you love me, you'll respect me enough to trust me in this."

Owen stared off into the distance, debating this inwardly, before he said in a heavy voice that suited a particularly melancholy funeral, "Very well. I'll take you, although if your father finds out, he'll kill me, which I hope is one of the consequences you'll be strong enough to handle."

"You're so dramatic." Margarry kissed him, and, for a second, anyway, worrying about Wyldon in a murderous rage fell off the top of his priority list. When she pulled away again, though, it rose up as a major concern once again. "Father loves me too much to kill you. He'll just threaten to do so in order to scare us both back into our places."

"I envy your confidence." Glumly, Owen shook his head. "Anyway, you do know that we can't ride to the refugee camp and back in one afternoon, don't you?"

"Yes." Margarry nodded smugly. "That's why you'll have to get up before dawn to meet me in the stables, so we can ride out together before Father or Mother notice that we have gone."

"You have this all planned out, don't you?" Owen shot her a sour look.

"Of course I do." If anything, Margarry became more complacent. "I knew that you'd surrender to my feminine wiles in the end, Owen of Jesslaw."

"What else do your feminine wiles have planned for me?" Unable to remain vexed at her for long even when she was being this aggravating, Owen grinned.

"Well, given how far the sun seems to have set in the sky, I would recommend that we hurry back to Egremont Castle, so that you can change in time for tonight's festivities," she educated him, and the two of them rose together.

"I agree, though why I should concern myself with being punctual when I'm about to be majorly disobedient makes no sense to me," announced Owen, as they set off down the path that led back to Egremont Castle.

Five minutes later, while he fumbled into a clean set of clothes in his room, Owen cursed himself for being persuaded to accompany Margarry to the refugee camp, especially since he couldn't wiggle out of going there now without appearing a coward, and nobody as strong as Margarry could ever love a wimp. During the ball he was serving at, he was so busy envisioning how Wyldon would disembowel him when he learned about Owen and Margarry's outing, that he was far more jumpy than usual, and, on a whole, he was rather fortunate that Oakbridge didn't disembowel him.

Finally, the horrible ball concluded, and Owen could stumble back to his bedroom. When he collapsed onto his bed, he found that he couldn't sleep, because worry about the trouble he and Margarry were about to land themselves in prevented him from drifting off to dreamland. As a result, he just stared out the window at the pinpricks of yellow twinkling in the black sky.

Eventually, the dark faded into a pewter gray, and then the wretched birds began chanting their pre-dawn songs. Somewhat relieved that he would now have the opportunity to commit the very crime he was fretting about, Owen pushed himself out of his bed and dressed as quietly as he could. Then, praising the probably long dead architects of the castle that he had a door in his room that fed directly into the hallway, which meant that he didn't have to creep like a thief through his knightmaster's quarters, he left his room, shutting the door softly behind him.

Trying not to look too guilty, he rushed down the empty hallways and out of the castle. Not slowing his pace, he hurried across the grounds until he reached the stables, where he met up with Margarry. Quickly, the two of them saddled their mounts and rode out toward the refugee camp.

It was around noon before they arrived at the refugee camp, but neither of them minded the lengthy journey, because it gave them time to chat. Indeed, by the time that they had arrived at the camp and had convinced the commander to allow them to visit the refugees, Owen was glad that they had defied Wyldon. Being with Margarry for a day like this was worth any punishment that Wyldon could devise.

When he and Margarry entered the barracks where the refugees resided, Owen saw instantly that the windows were lined with animal hides and the walls with bunks just like the ones he had seen at Giantkiller. The second they walked in, they were assaulted by the fumes of the midday meal that the refugees were cooking with the skimpy vegetables and fatty meat that local nobles had grudgingly furnished them with, as well as the even less appetizing odors of unwashed human, sweat, and urine.

Watching Margarry's eyes widen as she took in how crowded the barracks were and seeing her nose wrinkle at the foul scents, Owen felt his stomach knot. Perhaps he had been wrong to escort her here, after all.

You weren't wrong, he snapped at himself, as Margarry stuck out her chin, and began handing out blankets and clothing to the refugees.

Seeing how grateful the refugees were to receive Margarry's gifts, he realized that it would have been wrong to prevent her from going. It would have been selfish to attempt to protect her at the expense of all these refugees who needed charity.

When Margarry had finished distributing the blankets and clothing, the refugees urged her and Owen to stay for their lunch. Luckily, since Owen found the prospect of eating whatever stew the refugee women had managed to concoct from their limited ingredients as appealing as getting lung rot, Margarry said that she and Owen wouldn't burden them by taking any of their precious little food. After that, she and Owen left the camp, and, as they rode away, Margarry revealed that she had packed chicken sandwiches in her saddlebags.

"That was awful," she groaned between mouthfuls of chicken sandwich, as she thrust a sandwich into his hand. "I can't bear to think of hundreds of people living in a place that I could scarcely bear to spend an hour in. Nobody should have to live crammed up against each other somewhere that smells like a hoghouse. People shouldn't be fed stuff worse than the chickens we're eating received, and decked out in rags, especially not here in the north, where the winters are so cold, and even the summers aren't exactly sweltering."

"They have nowhere else to go, Margarry," he told her, munching away at his sandwich. "The army resources are limited, and the local nobles refuse to donate much of anything. If it makes you feel any better, their home lives probably weren't much better."

"Oddly enough, that doesn't make me feel any better." Margarry fixed a gaze on him filled with such anguish that he knew it would haunt him forever. "It's almost enough to turn me into a progressive, in fact. After all, the progressives are supposed to cheer whenever the poor, the disenfranchised, and the damned are mentioned, aren't they? Then again, I suspect that a conservative would argue that charity is a virtue practically as old as time."

"I wouldn't know." Owen shrugged. "I don't tend to fuss about politics overmuch."

"That's probably a wise decision," she remarked, her eyes still jammed with shadows. "It was politics that led to the war between Scanra and Tortall, I'll bet, and I reckon that very few of the peasants in those barracks gave a whit about politics. Maybe if politics didn't exist those men, women, and children would still be at home, tending to their crops. Perhaps so many of their friends and family members wouldn't be dead if nobles and royals weren't so quick to get into debates over matters of policy that don't affect most beings. Maybe some of those people we saw in the barracks wouldn't have been maimed, disfigured, and in so much pain if it weren't for stupid politics creating pointless rifts between groups."

"The Scanrans invaded and attacked us," he reminded her. "Us Tortallans are doing nothing more than our duty when we fight them. When we do battle against them, we're trying to protect innocent civilians like those refugees."

"Of course you are." Margarry sighed gustily. "I know that, and I realize that I should probably hate the Scanrans for the crimes they committed against these poor people. Oh, Owen, it makes me sick to think of the refugees being attacked for nothing—for going about their daily lives and harming nobody. I don't imagine that one of them could have been a real threat to the Scanrans, and the Scanrans hurt them anyway." Here, her voice broke. "I just can't bear it, and I can't see the end of it. Sometimes I truly fear that this dreadful war will persist until we're all drowned in a crimson ocean of blood."

"No, it won't," Owen promised her, his hands clenching on his reins. "The king won't let it. Your father won't let it. I won't let it. Believe it or not, we're making progress, Margarry. We've bagged Blayce and Stenmun. The killing devices are broken, and the Scanrans are losing morale by the day. The war isn't over yet, but it's getting there, and when it's done, it won't be us that will have lost."

"Good." Margarry didn't seem mollified. "As soon as we finish this war, perhaps we can start one with Tyra or Galla. After all, we all know that peace can never last for long. That's why as soon as we almost had the immortals under control, this war with Scanra began. Perhaps none of us will ever be safe, no matter how much knights and soldiers fight."

"We're safer if we fight than if we just allow the immortals and the Scanrans to trample over us without a protest," he soothed.

"Yes, it's safer." Finally, the haunted expression disappeared from Margarry's eyes. "I must not lose sight of that. Well, I suppose that is enough doom and gloom for now. Let's talk about something happier like how we're going to grow old together. Well, actually, how we're going to almost grow old together. Since I'm five months your senior, young man, I'm going to grow old first if you want to be technical about it, but the point is that we'll muddle through the good and bad together."

"We'll turn the bad into the good." He smiled, but sobered quickly when guilt coursed through him, forcing him to add, "Margarry, I'm sorry I took you somewhere that upset you."

"Mithros, Owen, don't apologize to me when I bullied you into bringing me." Margarry waved off his apology. "I'm not sorry you took me. It wounds me to see people suffering like this, but I don't want to be the kind of being who could close my eyes to it, either. Even though the truth is ugly, I'm glad that I know it, despite the fact I can do nothing about it except provide the refugees with some measly blankets and clothes."

"Did I mention that I love you yet today?" he asked, staring at her in admiration.

"No." She chuckled, throwing back her head so that the sunlight rippled seductively in her dark locks. "However, you showed it, which is even more important."

After that, they spent the rest of the journey back to Egremont Castle laughing and teasing each other. Their merriment died immediately, though, when they came into the stables and spotted Lady Vivienne and Lord Wyldon waiting for them outside the stalls where Owen and Margarry kept their horses. Both of them had their hands planted on their hips and scowls clear enough to be seen in Scanra on their faces.

"Margarry, do you have any idea how worried your father and I were when neither of us had a clue where you were and when we saw that your horse was gone?" Lady Vivenne demanded, as Margarry led her mare into her stall. "Where have you been, anyhow?"

"For a ride, Mother," answered Margarry with a determinedly cheery and innocent vagueness.

"I assumed as much." Lady Vivienne's scowl deepened. "Don't be smart with me, young lady, since you're in enough trouble as it is already. Tell me where you went riding to."

"There's no need for her to do so, Vivienne," Wyldon spoke for the first time, his tone perfectly frigid. "I think we can see by Margarry's evasion that she and Jesslaw went to the refugee camp that I specifically forbade her from visiting, just as I had suspected. Of course, if you require further proof we can just ask Jesslaw. He refuses to lie even when common sense dictates that he should."

"I don't require further proof, Wyldon," Vivienne replied, while Owen struggled to conceal his annoyance at being discussed by his knightmaster as if he weren't present. "I merely require that my daughter be honest with me."

"Very well, then, Mother, I rode with Owen to the refugee camp that Father forbade me from visiting," Margarry cut in, sounding peeved at being discussed as if she weren't there, as well. "Is that honest enough for you? Also, for the record, I wasn't being dishonest; you just weren't being specific."

When Owen blinked at her, wishing that she wouldn't anger her parents any more, she leaned over and whispered in his ear, "We'll muddle through the good and the bad."

Owen opened his mouth to hiss back that she was forcing them to muddle through more bad than they had to, when Wyldon's voice lashed through the air. "Stop that whispering, you two. It is horrible enough that you miscreants conspire behind my back, but you won't do so in front of my nose." Reflexively, Owen and Margarry pulled away from each other like startled bunnies, as Wyldon, looking around the stables, continued, "We are making a scene. We'll resume this conversation in my study."

"I won't be attending it," declared Lady Vivienne, as the four of them exited the stable. "I promised Karina that I would play a game of cards with her and Caderyn today, and I want to appease them, since they are so distraught over the wedding being postponed due to war. I trust that you can handle Margarry fine on your own."

"Certainly I can." Wyldon nodded, and, after that, they were silent as they made their way across the grounds to Egremont Castle. As they moved through the now teeming corridors, they remained quiet, and when they reached her rooms, Lady Vivienne left them. Not long after that, Owen and Margarry found themselves being ushered into Wyldon's office.

"Margarry." Once the door had shut behind Wyldon and he had gone to stand behind his desk, his fingers pressing against it so that the knuckles turned white, he riveted his glower on his daughter. Despite the brave face she had put on earlier, Owen felt Margarry cringe beside him. He couldn't blame her. Wyldon had that impact on people, and Owen sensed that neither he nor Margarry would be escaping this room without feeling like they were going to bawl like toddlers. "There aren't words strong enough to convey how disgusted and disappointed I am by your blatant disobedience. Then, as if being defiant isn't enough for you, you had to lead my squire astray along with you, which manages to infuriate as well as disgust and disappoint me."

"She didn't lead me astray, my lord," protested Owen, because Margarry was flushed and had her head bowed. Nobody, not even Wyldon, was going to tear her to shreds while he was around, and, besides, he resented the implication that he hadn't made his own choices.

"Quiet, Squire," Wyldon warned, not even sparing him a glance. "I'm not in the mood to deal with your pointless interruptions at the moment."

"They aren't pointless, sir," insisted Owen, fighting to keep his voice steady. "They're important. You shouldn't blame Margarry for the things I chose to do. That's not fair."

"Yes, it is," Margarry countered miserably before Wyldon could. "You wouldn't have chosen to do them if it weren't for me. I led you into trouble, and, for that, I'm sorry, Owen."

Before Owen could remind her that he had knowingly brought the trouble upon himself by electing to accompany her, Wyldon intervened crisply, "Jesslaw, rest assured that you and I will be having a conversation about your behavior, in which I will be sure to hold you accountable for your actions. As for you, Margarry, I trust that you will bear in mind the fact that your mother and I are the injured parties in all this when you are issuing your apologies."

"I'll apologize to whomever I feel deserves it, Father." Margarry's chin had risen again, although her cheeks were still flaming.

"You don't think that I deserve an apology for being deliberately disobeyed?" Wyldon's eyes narrowed dangerously. "You don't think that I deserve an apology for the worry I felt when your mother told me that you were missing?"

"I apologize for distressing you and Mother," Margarry said after a brief pause. "I'm sorry about defying you, too, but I wouldn't have been forced to do so if you'd permitted me to drop the blankets and clothes off at the refugee camp."

"That's not how the world works," snapped Lord Wyldon. "I shouldn't have to explain these things to you at your age. You should know by now that if I forbid you to do something, you shouldn't do it, no matter how much you wish to do so. You should be aware that if I do not allow you to do something, there is a good reason behind my decision. You should understand that my primary concern as a parent has never been the happiness, but rather, the safety of my children."

"Father, I'll never be safe," Margarry exploded. "I wasn't even safe in a convent dedicated to the Great Mother Goddess in the City of the Gods!"

"I comprehend better than you do that this world is a perilous place, thank you." Despite his sharp tone, an oddly vulnerable cast slid over Wyldon's features, and Owen suspected that his knightmaster was reflecting on his failure to shield Anwen. "That's why I design rules that are intended to minimize danger for you. Unfortunately, I cannot protect you properly, Margarry, if you insist on thwarting me every step of the way."

Silence flooded the study for a moment. Then, Wyldon waved a hand in dismissal. "Go, Margarry. You can contemplate in greater detail the consequences of defiance while you mend a week's worth of linens. Be sure to tell your mother that you are sorry that you distressed her earlier. If I find that you have disobeyed me in any of this, you'll be sorry until well into your senility, I promise you."

"Yes, Father." Margarry swept a curtsy and then departed, shutting the door in her wake.

Once she had left, quiet filled the room again, as Owen thought that assigning someone a week's worth of mending was a cruel and unusual punishment. After Wyldon seemed to deem that he had terrified his squire enough with a suitable period of enigmatic, tense silence, Wyldon said, "Since it seems to have caused you much confusion today, Squire, I will start by clarifying one very crucial point: I control your schedule, not you. Just because I chose to give you the afternoons off while we were here doesn't mean that you were entitled to them, and you do not have any free time unless I grant it to you. Hours away from work are privileges knightmasters tend to revoke from their squires when they are abused. Of course, you didn't have permission to take either the morning or the afternoon off today, which is a problem in and of itself."

"Yes, sir," Owen mumbled, mainly because Wyldon had paused, which appeared to indicate that he expected a response of some sort.

"Also, you should note that it is in very questionable taste to take a lady to visit a refugee camp." Wyldon's lecture resumed. "There are some sights that members of the gentler gender shouldn't behold, and refugee camps are among them."

Before Owen could point out that Kel was running her second refugee camp on Wyldon's orders, Wyldon sighed. "Tell me, Owen. Did you know before you left with my daughter that I had forbidden her to go to the refugee camp?"

"Yes, my lord." Knowing that this probably increased by a great deal whatever his sentence was likely to be, Owen swallowed hard and resisted the overwhelming compulsion to scrutinize the floor.

"Humph," Wyldon grunted, scratching away at his injured arm. "In that case, you are admitting that you were completely aware of just how wrong your actions were when you took my daughter to the refugee camp."

"No, sir." Owen shook his head stubbornly. "You see, I didn't take Margarry to the refugee camp because I thought it was wrong. I took her because I believed it was right."

"I trust that now you think otherwise." Wyldon arched an eyebrow.

"No. sir." Again, Owen shook his head. "No matter what you say, I still think it was the right thing to do."

"How can you possibly say that when, despite her laughter, my daughter was pale when she came into the stables?" Lord Wyldon demanded. "Obviously, she was distraught, Jesslaw. I would think that if you cared about her at all, you would be distressed by that."

"I care about her a great deal, my lord," established Owen vehemently. "Her pain is my pain. I know that she was hurt by the suffering she witnessed today, but I also realize that she doesn't wish that she hadn't gone. I know that, despite how horrible she felt, she wasn't sorry that she went, and, as such, I'm not sorry that I took her. Since she doesn't think that she has the right to hide from the truth, I won't conceal it from her, even if you think that I should."

"You're skating on very thin ice indeed, Squire." Wyldon's fingers drummed on his desk, and his manner was as treacherous as the ice he described. "You would do well to recall that Margarry is my daughter, and while she is unmarried, she is by law under my authority. That means that I—not her and certainly not you—will decide what is best for her."

"She doesn't become a weak fool just because you're determined to treat her like one, sir," Owen muttered under his breath, scowling.

"I treat her in accordance with how she conducts herself." Wyldon's snapping eyes matched his tone perfectly and made it apparent that he had heard Owen quite fine.

"She acts like someone who can make intelligent decisions for herself." Even as he expressed this sentiment, Owen was well aware that it would send him on the fast track to trouble, which he seemed to be making a habit of visiting lately.

"Such wisdom, of course, is coming from the mouth of a young man who has yet to master the art of controlling his own tongue." Studying his squire with an unfathomable look in his eyes that Owen couldn't remember encountering previously, Wyldon shook his head. "Mithros, Owen, if I had a son, I would hope that he turned out as brave and as stubborn as you, but if you were my son, I would have to box your ears right about now for your insolence and defiance."

"What's that supposed to mean, my lord?" Owen gawked at his knightmaster. Was that Wyldon's way of warning him that if he continued arguing he was at risk of getting whacked? Was that a typical backhand compliment from his knightmaster? Was it both? Well, Owen had no clue. All he knew was that it was about as effective at quelling his arguments as an actual slap would have been.

"It means go to your room and finish packing." Glowering, Wyldon nodded at the door that led into Owen's bedroom. "It means when you've done that, you can spend some time figuring out how you can start acting like a proper squire sometime before you complete your Ordeal. It also means that when we return to Fort Mastiff, you can enjoy a week of latrine duty."

"Well, that's perfectly clear." Convinced that having his ears boxed would be preferable to a week of latrine duty, Owen bowed and disappeared into his room to finish throwing his clothes and other possessions into his bag.


	40. Chapter 40

Fathers

Owen nearly leapt off his bed in alarm when a tap on the door that led into the corridor interrupted his reading about one of Emry of Haryse's campaigns. He had read the book three times previously, but re-reading was better than doing nothing, and he had finished packing ages ago.

For a second, he considered shoving the book under his pillow, because he was confident that Wyldon would not regard reading as an appropriate fashion in which to reflect on being a proper squire. Then, he realized that his knightmaster wouldn't be knocking on the hallway door since their rooms were connected, so it was probably safe not to hide the book.

Glad to have something to do besides read about battles that were less exciting the fourth time they were re-examined, Owen hurried across the room and opened the door to reveal Margarry.

"You shouldn't be here," he hissed, as she slipped inside and shut the door softly behind her. "Do you care to guess how many important body parts your father will remove from me if he catches us alone in my bedroom?"

"If he always sees people bedding each other behind closed doors, that's more his problem than ours." Margarry nudged Owen, who wasn't feeling particularly playful at the moment, in the ribs.

"He'll find a way to make it more our problem than his, I promise you," countered Owen. "Actually, he'll probably make it a much bigger problem for me than for you."

"Relax and stop trying to give yourself gray hairs." Impatiently, Margarry rolled her eyes. "Father won't catch us, I assure you. Mother's room is next to mine, and I heard him helping her select a gown for tonight's ball. That always takes hours because Mother thinks that every dress makes her look ugly, and Father is convinced that every outfit makes her even more beautiful, so it takes them approximately an eon to eliminate any gowns."

Feeling some of the tension coiled inside him ebb, Owen plopped onto his bed again and gestured for her to seat herself beside him. Once she had settled herself, Margarry's eyes fixated on the book Owen had been reading, and she asked, "Is that any good?"

"It's better the first three times you read it," he informed her, grinning ruefully. "As you can see, I was busy thinking about how to conduct myself like a proper squire before you interrupted me."

"You're going to make me feel guilty for thinking about the merits of sleeping on the floor instead of about the importance of obedience while pricking my fingers and failing to mend bed linens," smirked Margarry. Then, her expression sobered, and she inquired, "How did your conversation with Father go?"

"Well, I'm still alive." Owen shrugged.

"I can see that." Margarry winced. "Was it really that awful?"

"I have latrine duty for a week when we return to Mastiff." Owen wrinkled his nose, as though he could already smell the dreadful stench of the necessaries flooding his nostrils. "Perhaps I should really be using my time in here to figure out how to hold my breath for an hour or two. I honestly don't know how, even in the summer heat, the latrines can be so foul, given that nobody ever seems to have the courage to use them. I suppose that somewhere along the way the latrines became sentient and managed to grow on their own."

"I'm sorry." Despite her words, Margarry appeared on the verge of laughter. "It's entirely possible that latrine duty is the one punishment worse than mending linens."

"On a whole, I guess I can't complain too much, since I made my own bed of thorns, and now I have to lie in it," sighed Owen. "I am perfectly aware from painful experience that arguing with an angry Lord Wyldon never makes anything better, and often makes things worse, but I continue to do it, anyway."

"Don't worry. I love you even though you're an idiot," Margarry assured him, knotting her fingers through his and offering him a twisted smile. "You're courageous and headstrong, which is oddly attractive, and might be the cause of your unique brand of stupidity now that I think about it."

"When you're so flattering, I can't regret insisting to your father that you don't become a weak fool just because he's determined to treat you like one until he was so furious at me that he told me that if he had a son, he would want his son to be as brave and as stubborn as me, but if I were his son he'd box my ears for my defiance and insolence," Owen scowled. "Whatever that's supposed to translate into Common as, I haven't a clue."

"It means that Father is liable to forget that defiance and insolence are the labels he gives to stubbornness and bravery in those under his authority when they set their wills against his," answered Margarry after a moment, squeezing his fingers. "It means that, in Father's opinion, while it's acceptable to indulge daughters, one should discipline sons. It means that, after all these years, he finally thinks that he's found a son in you."

"Are you insane?" Owen stuttered, gawking at her as if she had just stated that slugs were gods. "Our relationship is purely teacher-student, and once I'm knighted, we'll only interact in a business setting. Anyway, if he did see me as a son, why wouldn't he have boxed my ears then?"

"Because you aren't his son," she replied simply. "You're somebody else's, and it would be wrong to treat you as though you weren't. Just because a man doesn't have a son of his own, that doesn't mean that he can kidnap someone else's."

"Knights never steal—they appropriate without permission," Owen teased her, deciding that he needed to transform this whole situation into a joke. Now wasn't a time in which he wished to attempt to untangle the knotted tapestry his emotions had become. If he didn't recognize his feelings, then he wouldn't have to act upon them, but if he admitted to them, then he would have to do something. Knowledge always brought with it responsibility, and at the moment, he didn't want any more of that.

Margarry grinned at his quip, and then commented, "You are familiar with my father, but I don't know a thing about yours. That's hardly fair, and puts me at a great disadvantage."

"There's not much to say about him really." Owen shrugged, wishing that Margarry hadn't brought the topic of his father up at all. The less Owen thought about his father, the happier he tended to be. "He has my hair—or I have his, I suppose—except it was going gray last time I saw him. He's also about as tactful as I am."

"Is he happy like you are?" asked Margarry.

"When the drink is in him, he's jolly enough." A bitter chuckle filled the room, and it took Owen a second to recognize the harsh, grating sound as coming from himself, and not some intruder. "Since he goes through about a bottle of wine a day and relies on it for his merriment, I would say he's depressed. Of course, he has reason to be, because he is still in love with a dead woman, which is why he has never remarried."

"In that case, he's a bad father?" Margarry murmured.

"No, he's not a bad father; he's just not a good one," faltered Owen. "Considering the fact that he's practically a drunkard, things could have been a lot worse for my sisters and me. After all, we could have been stuck with a father who physically and verbally abused us, instead of basically ignored us, leaving the whole chore of disciplining and raising us to the people hired to do so. Maybe he never showed any sign of loving any of us children, but he never treated us like he hated us, either. I doubt that he cared about us at all once my mother was killed, but I reckon he did the best he could, given that his heart wasn't in the job at all."

"I don't understand how he could ignore the children of the wife he loved so much." Margarry shook her head rapidly. "If the person I loved died, I would treasure anything that reminded me of them. As long as the offspring of the being I loved were alive, the person I loved would be with me in a tangible form."

"He ignores us precisely because we all remind him of our mother in some fashion." Owen swallowed the lump that had taken up residence in his throat without warning. "He can't bear that, since it drives home in his heart that the woman he loves is truly gone from this world. Ever since she passed away, all he could think about was his pain, and how he was deprived of a wife. It never seems to occur to him that her murder might have wounded her children, too, or how her death might have denied them a mother, so they might need a father all the more. That's not how I'd like it to be, but it's how it is, and probably how it will be until my father himself dies."

"You aren't normally this pessimistic," she chided gently, stroking his hair. "You typically leave the morbid notions to me."

"I don't make a habit of lying to myself, either," he responded dully, running his fingers through her hair, and admiring how it shimmered when he moved it. "Even an idealist like me has to accept reality sometimes, even if fantasy is prettier."

"In other words, my cynical nature is contagious." For a second, Margarry favored him with her dazzling grin. Then, her face grew somber, and she muttered, "I think I understand why you care about Father's opinion of you so much now."

"Why is that?" Owen cocked his eyebrows at her.

"I suspect that you know exactly what I am referring to, Owen, but if you aren't ready to confront the truth yet, I won't force you to do so," she told him after a short hesitation, and he tried to stifle his annoyance at her enigmatic behavior. "I'll just say that, when it comes down to it, every young man needs a father figure, and you might want to think about who yours is, given that your father seems to have absented himself entirely from that crucial role in your life."

Gazing into Margarry's keen, unflinching brown eyes that somehow managed to convey an incredible amount of sympathy, Owen realized that he couldn't afford to lie to himself any more. The truth was that he did have a father figure, and, even if he had never had the nerve to consciously think about it, he knew who it was just as well as she did.

If he was finally honest with himself, he would have to confess at least in his head that he craved Lord Wyldon's approval in the same manner a son thirsted for his father's. While he was on the subject, he would also have to admit that he feared disappointing Lord Wyldon as much as if the man were his father. When it came down to it, he couldn't deny that Lord Wyldon had provided so much of the guidance and discipline that his biological father, Lord Orrin of Jesslaw, hadn't. Ultimately, it had to be acknowledged that the man who had taught him just about everything he knew about being a knight had been a father to him in every way except the biological one that didn't really count.

Then again, maybe the biological contribution couldn't be so easily glossed over. After all, Owen was Lord Orrin's heir, not Lord Wyldon's. In Tortall, inheritances mattered; they determined who could marry whom, and what careers a person could engage in. Birth and blood couldn't be discounted completely. Even Owen's name marked him as a Jesslaw, since it followed the family custom of starting with an o.

All in all, then, both Lord Wyldon and Lord Orrin were his father, but, at the same time, neither of them really were. On one hand, Owen had two fathers, while on the other, he was an orphan. He belonged to both of them and neither of them. In the end, he could tell himself that he was lucky to be the heir of a wealthy noble like Lord Orrin, and he could remind himself that he was indescribably fortunate that someone like Lord Wyldon would treat him like a son at all. None of that helped. Even though he was well aware that thousands of children in Tortall would have killed to be in his position, he still felt like sobbing. No matter what, it still burned him that his biological father really wanted nothing to do with him, because, despite what he had said to Margarry, he would always be convinced that he had done something besides resemble his mother to drive his natural father away. In spite of everything, it hurt to know that, no matter how much he and Wyldon acted as though it were otherwise, Lord Wyldon would never really be his father.

"Curse it!" he burst out, bashing his hand against his forehead, and half hoping that he would end up battering his brain out. "I never used to mind not having a real father until I found out what having a decent one might be like."

"You don't grumble about the rain until you've experienced a glorious, bright day," observed Margarry dryly, wrapping her arms around him. He shuddered against her, because, even with her clinging onto him, he had never felt so alone in his life. "That doesn't make the sunshine bad."

"It does if you're going to spend the rest of your existence in a thunderstorm," Owen mumbled, addressing the palms he had still buried his head in, since not only did it seem safer, but he wasn't ready to face the world yet. Maybe he never would be again. Perhaps he would stay here forever with Margarry's arms slung around him. "Tasting something when you know perfectly well that you'll never really have it is worse than never experiencing it at all. It just makes you long for things that you can never have."

Then, before Margarry could reply, he recognized that he had to turn this whole mess into a gigantic practical joke that the gods had played upon him. Looking up slyly, he wanted to know, "If I see Lord Wyldon as my father, does that mean that I fell in love with my sister?"

"We probably are no more biologically linked than any two random nobles, and we weren't reared together, so, no, you perverted young man." Margarry rolled her eyes, although Owen surmised that she was glad that he was back to being his typical exuberant self.

"Don't you think that 'perverted young man' is by definition redundant?" he snickered.

"I'm not even going to dignify your foolishness with a response." As she established as much, Margarry stuck up her nose.

"You just did." Ignoring the jab in the ribs this earned him, he added more seriously, "I'm glad I didn't fall in love with my sister, because incest makes me squeamish."

"Me too." Silence ensued between them for awhile, before Margarry went on, "You know, the main reason that I brought up your father at all was because I wished to make certain that you were free."

"Of course I'm free!" Owen exclaimed, wondering if blood loss from all the needle pricks Margarry had sustained while mending had caused her to go temporarily loopy. "Slavery hasn't existed in Tortall for ages, and, anyway, I'm nobleborn—just like you, Margarry!"

"I wasn't asking if you were secretly a Carthaki slave." Again, Margarry rolled her eyes. "Goddess bless, Karina's right for once—men really are hopeless when it comes to romance. Owen, I was asking if you already were engaged to someone else, because, if you were, this whole situation would be very embarrassing for me, to phrase it mildly."

"Obviously I'm not engaged to anyone else." Owen continued to gape at her as though she were babbling on in a language he couldn't comprehend, even though he was starting to understand enough to feel offended. "I never would have declared my love for you if I was promised to somebody else. That would be cruel to do to you and my nonexistent, imaginary fiancée."

"I wasn't accusing you of lying to me." Margarry must have sensed that he was miffed, because her tone was appeasing. "I just hadn't considered until Mother pointed it out to me when she was giving me some sheets to mend that almost as many young nobleman as noble ladies have marriages arranged by their parents in order to enhance the prestige or wealth of their families, or to forge alliances with other powerful families. For some stupid reason, it had never occurred to me before she mentioned it that heirs like you were as likely as a daughter to be made pawns to the ambitions of their parents. She said it was so easy for a young man to be caught up in a whirlwind of passion and to make promises he can't keep to a girl he loves. She claimed that it was simple for a young man to convince himself that he could break off a betrothal and wed the girl he really loves when, in reality, he can't without being disowned and ostracized for the rest of his life, which would prevent him from providing for the girl he loved. She said that in such cases the sooner the young man and the girl he loved realized that their relationship was doomed, the happier they would be."

"Well, my father's indifference might have saved our relationship," Owen said, relieved that at least there was one advantage to having a father who really didn't give a whit what happened to him. "He lacks the interest in court life to bother brokering a marriage just to increase the family status, and our fief is wealthy enough that necessity didn't require it."

"Then, on a purely theoretical basis, your father wouldn't object to a Cavall-Jesslaw marriage?" Margarry pressed, her taut face finally relaxing.

"To be blunt, your father is about one hundred times more likely to object to having me as a son-in-law than mine is to complain about having you for a daughter-in-law," snorted Owen.

"You're always over-reacting." Margarry clucked her tongue against the roof of her mouth. "Father doesn't hate you nearly as much as you delight in pretending that he does."

"Oh, and not being hated is the only qualification for being a good son-in-law." Now, it was Owen who rolled his eyes impatiently. "How could I have forgotten?"

"I liked you better when you weren't sarcastic," groused Margarry. "Anyway, didn't I just finish explaining to you that Father sees you essentially as a son? After that, can it really be so impossible for him to accept you as a son-in-law?"

"Yes, because your father doesn't believe that I can care for you properly," he educated her grimly. "When I placed snow on your injured ankle, he was furious at me, and today he was practically apoplectic at me for taking you to the refugee camp."

"Don't be silly," scoffed Margarry. "With the snow, he was only angry because my dress was up so you could see my ankles, which we all know is absolutely scandalous. He wasn't cross at you for being concerned about me, or for immediately acting to help me as best as you thought you could. Certainly, he disagreed about the manner of assistance that you chose, but you didn't botch up half as much as you believe you did. As for today, yes, he was mad, but I also think he knows that you took me to the refugee camp because you respected me and trusted me. Father's always insisting that the foundation of an enduring marriage is mutual respect and trust more than it is mere passion. When he feels that way, I don't think he can truly regard your actions with me as a total blunder."

"If he feels that way, why doesn't he say so himself?" Owen eyed her dubiously.

"He can never tell you stuff like that, since he can never admit that any man can care for his daughter as well as he can, or that anybody is worthy of his baby girl." Margarry chuckled. "At any rate, though, you'll work in a pinch. Certainly, he knows you better than he did Caderyn when he agreed to allow Caderyn to propose to Karina, and you're his squire, so he's had a major influence on the sort of person you are."

"And the last time he gave one of his daughters to one of his squires, things turned out wonderfully." The wry words spilled out of Owen's mouth before it occurred to him that mentioning Bevin to Margarry probably wasn't the most sensitive decision he had ever made in his life, and he choked out, "Sorry. I shouldn't have said that."

"There's no need for you to apologize." If anything, her tone was even more strangled than his, and her eyes were moist with unshed tears when she scrutinized him. "It's true what you said about Sir Bastard, and with the two of us getting together, in so many ways it is like history repeating itself. Maybe that's the point. Perhaps the gods brought you to Cavall to erase some of the scars Sir Bastard left behind. Maybe you were meant to show me I could love a man besides my father, just as you were supposed to not only be the son my father always dreamed of having, but the proof that he is not a failure as a teacher."

"I thought that the gods brought me to Cavall so that I would have chance at having a real father," remarked Owen, not knowing whether to laugh or cry, and compromising by making a coughing noise in his throat.

"The gods probably intended for that to happen to," she murmured in his ear, her breath tickling his cheek. "In the end, I reckon that for all the suffering the gods foist upon us, they do have a method to their madness, and they will send us people to patch up our wounds, as long as we do our part in healing the beings that they send to us. Perhaps it is the will of the gods that we always find the people who can help us most to grow, and who can make us grow in return."

"Whatever you say, I still don't believe Lord Wyldon will accept me as son-in-law." Returning to the issue that was troubling him most at the moment, Owen shook his head.

"Then you are a fool," Margarry snapped. "You and Father are like two dragons locked in a battle to the death. Both of you have your teeth sunk deeply into each other's skin, and neither can risk releasing the other for fear of bleeding to death. No, the two of you will be forced to deal with each other for many years yet, I foresee."

"What a heartening image."

"Oh, it's the best picture to sum up the relationship not only between a father and a son, but also between a father-in-law and his son-in-law, as well as the connection between a mother and daughter, and mother-in-law and daughter-in-law." Margarry shrugged. "It may not be upbeat, but it's honest."

"Well, if you marry me, you won't have to worry about a mother-in-law," Owen muttered, kissing her.

"True, but I wish that I would have to." Margarry's answer was no more than a whisper as she returned the kiss.

For an eternity that felt too short, their lips remained locked together. Then, Margarry pulled away. "I should go," she announced reluctantly. "Now, don't worry about getting Father to agree to our marriage, and devote yourself to making sure that you survive your Ordeal, Owen. After all, if Father says no, we can always elope."

"No, we can't," gasped Owen, appalled, as she reached the door but made no movement to open it.

"Why not?" Margarry arched an eyebrow at him. "If my family truly loved me, they would accept my choice. If they don't truly love me, I'm better off without them in my life. All I need is you."

"I wouldn't want you to give up your family for me," he protested fervently, shaking his head frantically. "I love you too much to allow you to do that. I know that every girl wants her father to walk her down the aisle, and I couldn't deprive you of that. I know that if our marriage estranged you from your family, that shadow would always hover over our relationship, and one day, it might even grow bigger than our love. Besides, I respect your father too much to be the second squire who stole a daughter from him."

"How can you be worried about Father refusing your request to marry me when you are forever spouting noble things like that?" Margarry asked, her hand poised over the knob. Her back was to him now, and Owen wished that it wasn't, because her voice was inscrutable, so he had no way of guessing what was in her mind or heart. "Anyway, to put you out of your misery, I will assure you that Father won't refuse your request. You see, the first time I could talk to Father alone after you returned from Scanra, I told him that I wanted to marry you, and he didn't deny me. All he said was that at least you were broken to bride now."

"You do realize that you're every nasty term that they have for women, and then some?" demanded Owen, glowering at her. At the moment, he was torn between staring in disbelief, crying in relief, laughing at her cruel trickery, and lobbing a pillow at her. "I'm confident that no proper court lady would have played around with my emotions so."

"Oh, yes, they would have, and they would have flapped a fan about flirtatiously all the while." Now, Margarry spun around to face him, a smirk lining her features and her eyes dancing with mirth. "Anyway, you should ask Father for my hand despite what I just told you, because it's traditional to have a father's consent to wed his daughter, and, as you are doubtlessly aware, Father sets a great deal in store by ancient customs. If you didn't approach him before you proposed to me, a rift would develop between you, and I don't think I could bear to sit through the resultant awkward Midwinter feasts."

"Since you seem to be devoting yourself to messing with my mind, I might propose to another girl, instead," retorted Owen, but she merely giggled as she sailed out, shutting the door in her wake. After all, she knew as well as he did that he would propose to someone else when there was a blizzard in July.

Once she departed, Owen didn't bother to pick up his book and resume his reading. His brain was much too cluttered for that sort of entertainment now. At the present, he was busy contemplating fathers, father-in-laws, future wives, how you went about proposing to a woman, and how you persuaded a father to give you his daughter in marriage, anyway.


	41. Chapter 41

Tainted

"Wonderful," announced boulder-faced Sergeant Hector Fortney, who not only looked like he had never found anything wonderful but also spoke in a tone that suggested he was perpetually attending the funeral of a loved one. He glanced around at Owen, Walden, and the two other soldiers standing around the latrine with buckets and shovels in their hands in a manner that made Owen wish that he hadn't returned to Fort Mastiff yesterday. "I got me four good men to help muck out the latrines today. That's one more man than the clerks told me I would have. What's the point of havin' clerks if they can't even count properly or organize anything like they're supposed to?"

"It ain't the clerks' fault," said Walden softly. "I wasn't assigned latrine duty. I just volunteered for it today."

As the other two soldiers stared at Walden as though waiting for him to deliver the punch line, Sergeant Fortney demanded, "Ye ain't jokin' around with me, Tanner, are ye? I ain't got time for any nonsense now."

"I'm not jokin'," answered Walden, sticking his chin out.

"Then ye and the squire can start diggin' a hole to bury the waste in," Sergeant Fortney ordered Walden, once it was apparent that Walden wasn't jesting. "Make sure ye dig the hole at least six yards from the wells, mind, or else it'll contaminate our drinkin' water. While ye two are doin' that, Sullivan, Fletcher, and I will start fillin' buckets."

"At least we'll be away from the stench for now," Owen muttered to Walden, as they moved away from the latrines, which managed to even stink up the air outside for about a foot or two. Together, they searched for a secluded location where they could safely dump the waste.

"Here's a good spot," remarked Walden, pointing at a patch of dirt too close to the eastern well for Owen's taste.

"Are you sure that's six yards away from the well?" Owen asked, measuring the distance from the area Walden had indicated to the well with his eyes. "It looks more like four or five yards to me."

"Don't worry," Walden assured him, clapping him on the shoulder. "I've been diggin' latrines for me family since before ye were born."

Watching Walden shove his spade in the earth and toss a mound of dirt over his shoulder, Owen decided to take the man's word about the distance. After all, he reminded himself, despite Lord Wyldon's lessons, he was not very skilled at measuring distance on maps, and so he was probably just as lame at determining an accurate distance measurement in real life.

"You didn't have to volunteer for latrine duty," he told his friend, as he started digging as well.

"Nobody ever has to volunteer for anythin'," snorted Walden, throwing piles of dirt over his shoulder all the while. "If ye are forced to sign up for somethin', then ye aren't really volunteerin', are ye?"

"You know what I mean." When his shovel scraped against a rock, Owen scowled and rolled his eyes before bending to pick it up. "You didn't have to keep me company while I was doing latrine duty."

"I know that I didn't have to." This time, it was Walden's opportunity to roll his eyes. "After ye visited me so much in the healers' ward, how could I not keep ye company now and still call myself yer friend?"

"The circumstances are completely different." Owen shook his head. "If I recall correctly, you were injured through no real fault of your own, whereas I brought this punishment upon myself."

"Oh, but the story of how you brought this punishment upon yourself is so romantic that I can't help bein' touched by it," chuckled Walden, his light blue eyes, which seemed to have the color leached out of them by the pain his Gift often inflicted upon him, sparkling.

"I'm glad that you can afford to laugh even when I can't." Owen glowered, reminding himself of his severe knightmaster. Unfortunately, he was too preoccupied with resisting the temptation to hurl a wad of dirt onto his friend's pale hair rather than over his shoulder to be disturbed by this notion.

"If I can't have a liaison of me own, let me enjoy yers vicariously," soothed Walden. When Owen's scowl continued unabated, he added in an almost playful voice, "Isn't this an excitin' and glorious way to serve yer country?"

"Yes, if it were any more exhilarating, I might be at risk of getting a heart attack," Owen agreed, his gray eyes dancing mischievously now. "Of course, we might be serving our country in a more exciting fashion pretty soon if you take my meaning."

"I might take it all too well." Suddenly, Walden stopped digging to focus his entire attention upon his companion. "Yer words would have nothin' to do with the meetin' that Lord Wyldon had with General Vanget over supper last night, would they?"

"All I'll say is that Vanget would like to push the Scanrans that are still on this side of the Vassa out of this district, and we might be involved in a large movement to evict them within two weeks," replied Owen, temporarily halting his work, too, in order to look directly into his comrade's face.

"Ye've said too much as usual," scolded Walden. "Honestly, Owen, the instant ye know somethin', ye decide to tell the whole fort."

"That's not true," he protested, stung. "I learned plenty of secrets from eavesdropping on Lord Wyldon that I've never told anyone, and when I do share information that I gather that way, I only confide it in people that I trust. It's never the whole fort."

"Aye, but once ye share a secret with someone, ye can't control whom they whisper it to," pointed out Walden, his tone as heavy as granite. "There's quite a bit of truth behind the ancient aphorism that three people may keep a secret as long as two of them are dead."

"You're not a blabbermouth, and neither are any of the people I've shared such secrets with." Owen waved this off.

"People don't need to be blabbermouths in order to share yer secret with a close friend of theirs, and then that close friend can whisper it to a buddy of theirs. Not long after that, the whole fort knows what it shouldn't." An odd expression flitted across Walden's features. "When ye're young, secrets can appear to be wonderful and tantalizing, but when ye're older, they're just hurtful and even deadly."

"What's that supposed to mean?" frowned Owen. He understood why you couldn't share military intelligence with an enemy well enough, but he still didn't think it was wrong to trust a close friend with an important secret.

"It means that this world is tough on honest people," responded Walden after a moment's pause. "It means that if ye don't learn how to keep yer mouth shut, somethin' will happen that will compel ye to do so."

Before Owen could answer this peculiar statement, the overwhelming, nauseating odor of human waste reached them. Coughing, they fumbled for their handkerchiefs. By the time the two of them had tied their handkerchiefs over their noses and mouths, Sullivan, Fletcher, and Sergeant Fortney arrived bearing buckets loaded with substances Owen determinedly refused to contemplate.

As Sullivan and Fletcher poured their buckets into the hole Owen and Walden had created, Sergeant Fortney grunted, "Are ye two certain that this pit is six yards from the well?"

"Aye, sir, we're sure." Walden nodded earnestly. "We measured the distance ourselves with our shovels and all. Ye can check if ye don't believe us."

"I believe ye," grumbled Sergeant Fortney after a few seconds' consideration. "I don't have time to waste remeasurin' things. Now, ye two can start helpin' us bring buckets of waste over."

His forehead knotted as he trailed behind the others back to the latrines, Owen pondered why Walden would lie to Sergeant Fortney about having measured the distance from the well. Perhaps Walden just didn't want to get in trouble for digging the hole the wrong distance from the well, or maybe he had been afraid that if he admitted that the well might not be six yards from the well, he and Owen might have to dig another one. Yet, it had been risky for him to lie to Sergeant Fortney. After all, if the sergeant had chosen to measure the distance, Walden would have money docked from his pay and receive extra, unpleasant duties for lying to a superior officer. Also, he and Owen would probably have been forced to dig another hole, anyway.

Well, all Owen could do was trust that his friend had a good reason for fibbing and praise Mithros that Walden hadn't been caught out in his lie. After all, it abruptly occurred to Owen as he filled a bucket with human waste smelly enough to make him feel as if he were about to faint and retch in unison, if Walden had been trapped by his own falsehood, Owen would have been in trouble, too. By staying silent, he had confirmed Walden's story and become a party to the lie.

Even knowing this, however, Owen didn't truly regret the role he played in quietly supporting Walden's lie until late in the afternoon eight days later when Lord Wyldon sent him to bring Sergeant Fortney to his office, and he overheard the loud conversation Wyldon had with Sergeant Fortney.

"Sergeant Fortney, this past week, I've received several interesting reports from the fort's healers." When he practically rested his ear against the oak door, Owen could hear Wyldon's frigid observation just fine. "They say twenty men so far this week have reported to them with uncontrollable vomiting and diarrhea. Five of those twenty men also have raging fevers and delirium. Three of the men have perished thus far, and four more appear unlikely to recover."

"Well, my lord, summer is the season for sickness what with bugs bitin' everyone and givin' everybody diseases." The confusion was apparent in Sergeant Fortney's voice, and Owen had no trouble envisioning his forehead scrunching up even more than usual.

"Yes, sickness is the bane of warm weather campaigns just as snow is the bane of cold weather ones, but the symptoms experienced by the men are consistent with those who have consumed contaminated drinking water," Wyldon rapped out.

On the other side of the door, Owen gasped. As any military person worth a quarter of his food rations was well aware, contaminated water was most commonly caused by waste being buried too close to the wells. Since he and Walden had been the last beings to dig a new hole to bury waste in, he was to blame for the drinking water becoming contaminated. That made him responsible for the deaths of at least three men. Three men would never be returning to their families or teasing their friends in the mess hall again thanks to his carelessness.

Blinking back the tears flooding his vision and wishing fervently that he had fussed more over the seemingly incorrect distance before it was too late, Owen listened as Sergeant Fortney mumbled something he couldn't discern.

"The healers have tested the eastern well and confirmed that it is contaminated." Owen heard Wyldon snap through the door, and he thought with a stomach plummeting sensation that Wyldon should be shouting at him, not at Sergeant Fortney. "They have also been kind enough to confirm that it is contaminated by human waste. That, obviously, means that waste was buried less than six yards from the well. Since you were in charge of latrine duty for the past three weeks, I hold you accountable."

Quiet permeated Wyldon's study, and Owen had to fight the urge to burst into the next room, insisting that his knightmaster should hold him accountable for what happened, rather than Sergeant Fortney. Then Wyldon concluded icily, "Sergeant Fortney, you will assemble a group of soldiers to assist you in digging a new well and covering the old one. Then, you and your men will dig up the waste, if any, that is within six yards of that new well. If you have any difficulty achieving this within the next two days, I will find myself questioning whether you are indeed fit to serve this realm as a sergeant. Dismissed."

Barely a second after the last word had left Wyldon lips, a harried, ashen Sergeant Fortney burst out of the study, nearly trampling over Owen. As soon as Sergeant Fortney departed, Owen entered.

"I wasn't aware of calling for you," Wyldon noted, arching an eyebrow at Owen, who gulped. Clearly, his knightmaster was still furious from his conversation with Fortney, which wasn't exactly the mood Owen wanted him to be in when he confessed the role he had played in the contaminated drinking water affair.

"My lord, you shouldn't blame Sergeant Fortney for what happened to the drinking water," Owen said in a rush, ignoring Wyldon's comment, as it seemed safest.

"You shouldn't eavesdrop, and if you insist on doing so, you should at least have the presence of mind not to announce that you have done so to the very people you eavesdropped upon." As he established as much, Wyldon's eyebrow continued to rise.

"You know that I eavesdrop all the time, sir, so there's no point in lying to you about it," reasoned Owen, barely pausing for breath, because he was in a hurry to return the conversation to the important issue of who was actually at fault for the contaminated drinking water. "Anyway, you can't hold Sergeant Fortney accountable for what happened. It was Walden and I who dug the hole for the waste too close to the well."

"Is that so?" Lord Wyldon asked, his tone and his face revealing nothing of what he thought.

"Yes, sir." Owen decided to confess everything at once. "Sergeant Fortney ordered Walden and me to dig a hole for the waste somewhere at least six yards from a well. Walden was the one who picked the location, and even though I thought it was less than six yards from the well, I went along with him. It's really my fault that the drinking water got tainted, because Walden may have been the one who misestimated the distance, but I'm the one who should have insisted that we measure it."

"Yes, you should have," agreed Lord Wyldon, his eyes hard. Each word was evenly spaced, sounding like a merciless rap against a tuneless bell in Owen's head, and increasing his guilt exponentially. "Sloppiness and carelessness in a knight endanger not only the life of the knight himself, but the lives of others depending on the knight in question. By now, you should know that. By this point, you should be aware of just how much every second and every inch matters. If there's anything you should have learned from me, that's it."

His cheeks flaming, Owen stared at the floorboards of Wyldon's office, far more interested in counting every one of them than he had ever been in the past. His impulse was to apologize to his knightmaster, but the words had evaporated before they could even reach his tongue. There were times when saying you were sorry was worthless, since an apology would change nothing. After all, saying he was sorry would not heal those who had gotten sick from the contaminated drinking water, nor would an apology restore life to those who had died because the waste had seeped into the well.

Before Owen could devise a response that somehow showed that he comprehended the gravity of the situation, Wyldon went on in the same manner, "However, your culpability does not lessen Sergeant Fortney's. He was the man in charge. As such, he should have ascertained that you and Walden had dug the hole properly, and he should have measured the distance from the well if it appeared too close. He failed to do so, and, thus, a hole dug in the wrong place came to be filled with waste. That is unacceptable, and, because of his inability to properly monitor four people on latrine duty, three men are dead. Nothing, not even incompetency in those under his command, excuses his errors."

Biting his lip, Owen considered this, but he still couldn't bring himself to blame Sergeant Fortney. Maybe Sergeant Fortney should have ordered Walden to measure the distance from the well in front of him, but Walden had lied to him, after all, by telling him that they had measured the distance already, and Owen had supported the falsehood by his silence. His decision to remain quiet had shoved events into motion as rapidly and inexorably as any incendiary remarks. Owen wished that he could explain all this to his knightmaster. Yet, he couldn't without implicating Walden. Getting his friend into trouble was something he couldn't do.

"Sir, I'd like to help Sergeant Fortney dig a new well and covering the old one," he said in the end. "I want to do the best to make right what I did wrong, even though I know nothing can really compensate for what I've done."

"I understand your desire to atone for your mistakes, and I can certainly spare you this afternoon," observed Lord Wyldon, drumming his fingers on his desk.

When he had first started out as Wyldon's squire, Owen would have assumed that was the end of the matter, but now he knew better. Now, he narrowed his eyes, and commented, "I sense a 'but' coming."

"I sense that you could still learn to wait a minute for your superiors to continue before interrupting them," countered Wyldon. He punished his squire by remaining silent for a few more seconds, in which Owen failed to conceal his impatience, and then resumed, "However, once the soldiers hear about the contaminated drinking water, I imagine that Sergeant Fortney will have no shortage of volunteers to assist him in digging the new well and covering the old one. That will solve the problem of the tainted drinking water quickly, but there are sick men in the healers' ward who won't be cured just because we dig a new well and cover up an old one. That won't prevent the healers from being overworked trying to tend to them all. That won't stop the healers from being grateful for volunteers to hold buckets, bully people into drinking medicine, and mop foreheads."

"Are you saying that I should go to the healers' ward, instead, my lord?" Owen hadn't entertained this idea at all previously, but now it seemed like a brilliant and obvious one. After all, the healers certainly would need extra helping hands, and if Owen was caring for men sickened by the tainted water, he could take the opportunity to apologize to them in person for what he had done. Perhaps this was an even better way to atone for his mistake than digging a new well and covering an old one.

"No, I'm saying that you have the afternoon off to accomplish whatever you deem most productive." Wyldon waved his hand in dismissal. "Choose for yourself what exactly that is. Follow your heart, because it doesn't lead you astray all the time, and go now."

Bowing, Owen raced out of the office. Already, he had made up his mind, and, now he just wanted to find Walden in order to see if his friend was available to volunteer in the sick ward with him.

Fifteen minutes later, in the infirmary, while Walden mopped the forehead of the soldier across from him, Owen knelt beside the cot of a young man who appeared not a day older than sixteen. Looking at the lad's almost ethereally white face that made the freckles dotting his skin seem almost black, Owen battled to swallow the lump that formed in his throat. He was responsible for the sweat soaking this boy's cheeks and shoulder blades. He was the reason that the lad was trembling even when his body was blazing.

"I'm sorry about this," Owen choked out, and hoped that the apologies would come more easily as he moved along the ward. "I'm the one who dug a hole for the waste too close to the eastern well, and that's why you're ill right now."

"Don't matter." The boy shivered and wrapped his blanket more tightly about his shoulders. "I'm always doin' whatever I can to get out of latrine duty, so I can't complain about the job other people do when they actually do it."

"I've got some medicine and some chicken soup for you," announced Owen when it became clear that this boy, at least, had forgiven him.

"Ye can be sorry about bringin' me medicine, then." The boy grimaced. "I'm convinced that I barfed up my last meal because of the medicine them healers gave me."

"Maybe it's a purgative," suggested Owen, shrugging and bringing the cup of potion to the other lad's lips. "Anyway, it's just herbs."

"It's the most disgusting mixture of them ever created, though," grunted the boy, but he allowed Owen to pour the foul smelling liquid down his throat without any further protest.

Once the boy had sputtered down the medication, Owen offered him a spoonful of soup, which his patient gulped down before grumbling, "Me ma's soup is much better than this, ye know. It ain't got no seaweed floatin' around in it."

"Seaweed?" Owen echoed, as he dribbled another spoonful of soup into the soldier's waiting mouth.

"All that green stuff," the boy told him once he had swallowed the latest bit of soup, gesturing at the bowl Owen clutched, and it took a bemused Owen a second to figure out what the other boy was referring to exactly.

"Oh, but that's parsley." As Owen established as much, he trickled more soup down the patient's throat. "It just adds flavor, and it's nothing like seaweed, or, at least, I think it's nothing like seaweed. Since I never ate seaweed, I suppose I can't say for certain."

"No, them green stuff is seaweed." Resolutely, the other boy shook his head. "I know what seaweed looks like. I spent time vistin' me aunt and uncle by the ocean. Them green stuff looks identical to seaweed, and seaweed ain't somethin' I fancy in me soup. Of course, I much prefer sour soup to chicken soup, anyhow."

"What's that?" Owen wondered vaguely if the soldier he was feeding was truly Tortallan, given all his peculiar notions.

"Ye nobles." The boy whistled as though it was Owen who was behaving like a foreigner. "Ye live in yer fancy manors and receive yer excellent educations, but ye don't know nothin' about sour soup."

"I don't," replied Owen, noting with relief that he was halfway done feeding this patient, which meant he could hopefully move onto a less disconcerting soldier next. "Perhaps other nobles would understand what you are referring to, but I haven't a clue."

"It's buttermilk," explained the soldier, his tone implying that he was telling the village idiot what one and one equaled. "Ye just set some buttermilk over the fire and leave it to bile. Then, ye beat up the yoke of an egg with some fine corn flour, and mix it all up into a paste. After ye make the paste, ye break off pieces of it and bile it in the buttermilk. Then ye gotta add plenty of pepper and salt."

"I see." Owen nodded, as his patient gulped down the last of the chicken soup.

As Owen rose to help the middle-aged man in the next bed, the other lad murmured, "Ye should be tendin' the next patient, and I'm powerful tired now, so I should be restin', but I want to tell ye somethin' first."

"I'm listening," responded Owen, kneeling beside the boy's bed again.

"The way ye apologized to me earlier, and the way that ye spoonfed me soup made me feel…proud. It made m e think that if there are nobles like that in this realm, I don't mind fightin' at all."

"There are lots of nobles like that in this country." Owen's throat was so constricted that it was a marvel he was able to breathe, nonetheless maintain his half of the conversation.

"Well, they don't make 'em like that in Stone Mountain," the boy informed him, and Owen was willing to wager that was factual. After all, Joren had been a vicious, arrogant scumbag, and, unless there was a tremendous windstorm, the apple was unlikely to land on the opposite end of the orchard to the tree from which it had fallen. "Anyway, I just want to tell ye that some of the fellows I've been livin' with in the barracks say that, like every conflict, this is a rich man's war and a poor man's fight. They claim that we're fightin' for all them wealthy nobles with their land and castles. The fellows I fight with live in a hovel like me, and they're lucky if their families own their own land. I was startin' to believe them fellows and beginnin' to feel really depressed about it, too. When you apologized to me and spoonfed me, though, I felt proud. Ye're from a quality family, and if quality people can treat me like ye did, I don't mind fightin'."

"Thank you." Owen blinked a couple of times to wipe the mist out of his abruptly hazy vision. "That was one of the nicest compliments I've ever received."

Before the boy whose name he still didn't know could respond, Owen moved onto the next bed. As he knelt beside the middle-aged man, Walden, who was walking toward the closet where the healers stored herbs, inquired, "Owen, do ye want me to get ye more herbs?"

"I'm fine," he answered. As he persuaded his latest patient to drink the medicine the healers had provided, Owen watched Walden leave the storage closet with not only a bundle of herbs in his fists but also his breeches pockets stuffed more fully than they had been before he entered the closet. Doubtlessly, Walden had taken the opportunity to stock up on some of the herbs that cured colds, which were common among soldiers and which soldiers were reluctant to visit the healers about.

Although Owen knew that, technically, Walden was stealing military supplies, he didn't challenge his friend. After all, Walden was in the army, and the herbs were intended for use by soldiers like Walden and the men Walden would distribute them to. If no harm was done, why make a fuss about nothing? The rulebook didn't have to be adhered to absolutely.


	42. Chapter 42

Mercy

"Are ye two goin' to the infirmary again today?" Lucian asked Owen and Walden three days later. It was breakfast time, and Owen along with several men from Davis' squad was waiting on line in the mess hall for food.

"No," replied Owen, shaking his head, as a pockmarked girl dumped two slices of toast as hard and as dark as charcoal onto his plate. "Everyone who was sickened by the contaminated water has either recovered or died by now."

"We were lucky," Walden added while the serving girl hurled toast onto his saucer. "We only lost five more men since Owen and I started helpin' out in the healers' ward."

"Us Tortallans are always lucky, because Mithros favors us above any other country," remarked Seth, his lips quirking snidely as usual. Eyeing the bread the girl had just plopped on his platter, he added, "Is that really toast and not coal?"

"I don't know," grunted Davis, as another serving girl plunked a bowl full of oatmeal that for once appeared hot onto Owen's tray. "Why don't ye set fire to it and see what happens, Seth?"

"Perhaps I will," Seth muttered, watching the serving girl place oatmeal on his, Lucian's, and Walden's trays. "It can't get any more scorched than this if it is bread, after all."

"It's about as black as Seth's heart." Lucian chuckled as they looked around for an empty spot at one of the long tables spanning the room that even in the early morning was packed with chattering and laughing soldiers.

"Aye, and about as hard, too," snickered Seth, while they settled themselves and he took his first bite of oatmeal. Then, Owen's quiet, routine breakfast descended into lunacy and mayhem. Suddenly, before he could truly process the transition, Seth was swaying back and forth on his bench, clutching his throat and plainly struggling to admit air into his lungs.

"Are ye chokin' on yer oatmeal?" demanded Walden, leaning across the table.

"Don't be stupid," Davis snapped. "The oatmeal is always lumpy, but it's never that bad."

As Seth toppled to the floor and thrashed about frantically as though battling an invisible opponent, Lucian, who had been sitting beside him, knelt next to Seth and began pressing against his chest.

"Call a healer!" yelled Lucian, as he pushed against Seth's ribs. "He can't breathe."

Numbly, Owen shoved himself to his feet, about to run out of the mess hall to the infirmary. However, when he rose, the sight that greeted him froze him. Ice trickled through his veins as he beheld knots of screaming soldiers clustered around men kicking on the ground, and realized with a jolt that he must have been so focused on Seth's suffering that he hadn't heard the other shouts all around him. Besides, in the babble that perpetually filled the mess hall, it was so simple and automatic to drown out yells coming from other groups.

Owen knew that he should be racing off to fetch several healers given the circumstances, but his legs obstinately remained motionless. When he had witnessed Seth choking, he had assumed that it was an accident that could, unfortunately, befall any individual. Now, he recognized that a chunk of oats hadn't lodged itself in Seth's throat. There had been something in the oatmeal that had poisoned him. After all, it was too much of a coincidence for all these men to choke on the same day like this.

Then, as Owen stood still, Seth's body finally ceased jerking about like a fish out of water. His eyes lost their wild cast and shifted into a glassy, absent expression. His hands stopped clawing at his own neck and collapsed harmlessly at his sides. His head hit the floor with a dull thud, and Owen knew that he was dead.

Abruptly, Owen felt like he couldn't breathe, either. It was as if he, too, had been poisoned, although he was well aware that he hadn't been, since he had not consumed so much as a nibble of food this morning. No, he hadn't been poisoned, nor had anyone else in their group, because Seth had distracted them. In a way, Seth had been their sacrificial lamb, and he had gone to his death as unknowingly as any hapless farm animal.

"Seth," wailed Lucian, shaking his comrade's lifeless body as though hoping to summon back a soul that had already departed to the Divine Realms. When Seth, unsurprisingly, did not move or speak, Lucian flopped onto the corpse in front of him. "Mithros, he's dead, and the last thing I ever said to him was that he had a black heart when that isn't even true."

"Hush," ordered Davis, prying Lucian away from Seth's body. "Don't clamor all over him now when ye don't even know what's killed him. For all ye know, it could be catchin'. Anyway, don't beat yerself up. Ye didn't realize he was goin' to die today, or else ye never would have said what ye did."

"Maybe since ye never can tell when a friend is goin' to die, ye should always act like they're goin' to pass away today," Lucian sniffed.

While Walden patted Lucian on the shoulder, Owen observed inwardly that Lucian was right—Seth hadn't possessed a black heart. In the final analysis, while Seth's worldview had at best been jaded and he had been forever ready to assume the worst of beings, he hadn't, despite his barbed comments, been cruel. Nor had he been half as hard as he had pretended to be. After all, he had been devastated when his nephew had been slaughtered at Giantkiller, and he had saved Walden not long before Owen had ventured to Scanra.

At the time, Owen had regarded Seth's rescuing Walden as an occasion of a merciful deity briefly controlling Seth, but now he understood that he was wrong; Seth's saving Walden had been a rare moment in which the man had allowed others to see the soft heart that resided under the tough shell. Yes, Owen determined in the end, Seth was worth at least a hundred of whoever had poisoned the oatmeal.

"Go fetch a healer, Owen." Davis' voice of forced calm pierced through the haze of Owen's grief.

"What's the point?" Walden waved a hand at Seth and at all the soldiers throughout the room who had stopped twitching around on the floor. "It's too late to save any of them."

"Yes," Davis agreed, swallowing, "but a healer can find out which poison was used. That, in turn, can provide us with insight into who was behind this nefarious deed. The sooner we discover the criminal, the less likely that we'll have to deal with another unpleasant scene like this one." Turning to Owen, he repeated, "Go get a healer."

Davis' passionless authority while everyone else panicked reminded Owen so much of Wyldon that he surged into action before he even remembered that, technically, he wasn't under Davis' command. As he dashed out of the mess hall toward the infirmary, he was fueled by a fire of fury directed against whoever had slipped poison the oatmeal. Whoever they were, they had dared to transform one of the few sanctuaries a soldier had into a place of terror. Whoever they were, they had been evil enough to transfigure a place of laughter into one screams and tears. Whoever they were, they had the inhumanity to replace a place of nourishment with one of death.

Worse still, they hadn't even had the gumption to employ proper weapons. No, they had traveled the coward's route of using poison against an unsuspecting adversary, instead. If it was possible, and apparently it was, Owen hated this brutal, faceless person who had poisoned the oatmeal more than he had ever hated anybody, including Blayce and Stenmun.

His boiling wrath ran with him into the infirmary where a balding senior healer, Dermot Nedley, whom he was familiar with from his many recent visits, glared at him.

"You know that we've patients in here sleeping at all hours of the day," Nedley reproved him, but Owen dismissed this.

"This is more important than their sleep." The words shot from Owen in a breathless rush. "Someone's poisoned the oatmeal, and several men are dead. You must come investigate immediately."

Even though Nedley's stunned features suggested that he had just been whacked on the skull with a mace, he quickly followed Owen out of the infirmary and into the mess hall without any protest. Once he had arrived in the mess hall, Nedley walked over to the kitchens and ran his hands along the pots that had contained the oatmeal. His golden magic illuminated the pots, his eyes were closed, and his lips were pursed in concentration.

Slowly, it dawned upon the soldiers assembled in the mess hall what was transpiring, and they formed a circle around the healer, anxiously awaiting his pronouncement of what poison had been employed. Someone also must have possessed the presence of mind to contact Lord Wyldon, since it wasn't long before the silent crowd was parting to allow him to stand beside the healer.

Owen, along with the solders, stared as Wyldon whispered something into Nedley's ear. For a second, it didn't seem like Nedley had heard, but then the light of his magic burned out, and he muttered something to Wyldon.

After concluding his hushed exchange with Nedley, Wyldon clapped his hands and barked, "There's no show here, men. Nedley informs me that only one pot of oatmeal was poisoned, but, to be safe, nobody will eat in here until the kitchen hands have scrubbed down every dish, utensil, and surface. Now I seem to recall that there is a mandatory strategy meeting in the courtyard in five minutes."

"We should go," said Davis to Owen, Lucian, and Walden. "We don't want to be late, after all."

As the four of them pushed through the throng toward the door, it became obvious from the congestion that Davis wasn't the only one who had made such a proposal to his neighbors. Moving torturously slowly, they exited the mess hall en masse and spilled out onto the courtyard, where the lucky first arrivals plopped on benches while those who were less fortunate sat on the grass or in the dirt.

"Do—do you know when Seth and the others will be buried?" Owen asked Davis awkwardly, as he, Davis, Walden, and Lucian slid onto a patch of green grass not far from a bench loaded with soldiers speculating on the recent attack. Owen suspected that the burial would be soon—probably that day—since the army preferred to bury their dead swiftly.

"Oh, they won't be buried at all," Davis informed him grimly.

"What?" sputtered Owen.

"After the healers are finished examin' them, they must be cremated," Davis explained thickly. "When poisoned people rot, the poison that killed them seeps into the ground. We can't have poison leakin' into our wells, so Seth and the others will be cremated tonight."

"I'll be there," promised Owen, and, before anyone could say anything further, Wyldon arrived. Quiet washed over the entire congregation, and, for at least half an hour, nobody whispered, fidgeted, or sighed restlessly as Wyldon outlined the play for the battle that would take place in three days, which was intended to force the Scanrans to retreat across the Vassa.

Once Wyldon had finished describing which companies would be deployed to fulfill which function where, Wyldon disappeared into the officers' quarters. Owen sensed that, after the chaos in the mess hall that morning, today would be a particularly busy day for his knightmaster, so with a hurried farewell to his four companions, he raced off to Wyldon's office.

As soon as he got there, he discovered that his knightmaster was too preoccupied with finalizing plans for the upcoming offensive to devote too much attention to the morning mess hall fiasco. Owen also soon found himself too caught up in preparations for the impending showdown to think about who had poisoned the oatmeal until sunset when he attended the cremation of all the soldiers who had perished that morning.

Watching as a flaming torch ignited the pyre and reminding himself fiercely that the fire no longer burned Seth, because surely the man had progressed onto the part of the afterlife where good beings suffered no more, Owen mumbled to Davis, who was standing alongside him, "I wish the healers knew what poison had done them in."

"The healers do know what did them in." Davis tore his gaze away from the pyre to look at Owen, and the extra moisture glistening in his eyes was apparent even in the flickering orange illumination afforded by the now blazing fire. "I saw Nedley whisper it to my lord Wyldon. It's juice of belladonna that was the death of our Seth."

"Juice of belladonna," repeated Owen. Never before had he noticed that such a foul plant which produced a lethal, colorless, and odorless juice had such a deceptively sweet and beautiful name.

"Yes." Davis nodded heavily. "It probably came from the storage room in the sick ward."

"Why would healers have poison?" Owen frowned, remembering with astonishing clarity how three days ago Walden had left the infirmary storage room with bulging pockets. That seemed especially suspicious now since it abruptly occurred to him that people were afflicted by colds in the winter, not the summer.

"They use juice of belladonna to speed along death in cases when a patient is facin' a lengthy, agonizin' demise that doesn't have a chance of bein' cured," answered Davis. "Lord Wyldon doesn't approve of these mercy killin's. He thinks that it's too close to aidin' a suicide and playin' the Black God. In his opinion, it's perfectly acceptable to kill a soldier in battle, but ye can't kill a doomed one in a sickbed. The king disagrees with him, though, so, upon royal orders, Lord Wyldon permits healers to administer juice of belladonna to hopeless patients as long as the aforementioned hopeless patients consent to takin' it."

However, Owen wasn't thinking about the moral complexities Davis was mentioning that arose from distributing juice of belladonna to hopeless patients. Instead, he was reflecting about how Walden had kitchen duty last night, and how easy it would be for someone to slip juice of belladonna into a pot of oatmeal…

"Davis, do you think that the person who poisoned the oatmeal lives here at Mastiff?" he wanted to know, biting his lip and praying for a negative answer. That way he could stop suspecting his friend of committing treason, sabotage, and murder.

Unfortunately, this was not to be, for Davis responded, "They must. The watch reported no unusual sightin's last night, and we have no visitors who could have done it. No, we must have a Scanran spy in our midst."

"Things like this have never happened before, though," Owen pointed out, because he didn't want to think that someone he confided in could ever so much as contemplate working for the enemy. There couldn't be a spy here, since surely somebody would have detected something odd by now…except that Owen had seen suspicious things and remained silent about them.

"Of course they haven't," answered Davis, his tone dark. "Up until just about midsummer, the Scanrans had us on the run thanks to their killin' devices. Once the killin' devices, Blayce, and Stenmun were knocked out of the equation, the scales quickly tilted in our favor, and we started routin' them. When that happened, the Scanrans wanted their spies to do more than pass along information to them."

"If their spies started committing sabotage, certainly that would attract attention," Owen argued. "It's dangerous for spies to draw attention to themselves."

"Aye." Davis nodded. "It's worth riskin' the life of a spy, however, to throw enemy forts into confusion and demoralize them behind the safety of their own walls. After all, most spies end up gettin' killed by their own side once they retire because they know too much, so them dyin' a bit early isn't an unbearable sacrifice. Killin' a decent amount of the enemy and demoralizin' them is worth the price of one spy."

While he listened to Davis expound upon the importance of demoralizing opponents and killing foes in their own strongholds, Owen recognized with a shiver that the poisoning in the mess hall wasn't the only recent catastrophe that fit that description. The contaminated water had a similar feel to it, since it had been the death of several men and had placed others in the sick ward for days. If that didn't count as confusing and demoralizing, he didn't know what did.

With the contaminated water, Walden had been the ultimate cause. At the time, Owen had perceived it as a genuine mistake, but now a nasty voice inside him reminded him that Walden wasn't an idiot, and, as Walden himself had pointed out when they dug the hole, he had been doing things like that since before Owen was born. That meant, as horrible as it was for Owen to admit it, Walden hadn't been incompetent. No, what he had done amounted to a deliberate act of malice.

Oh, and to think that Owen had assumed that Walden had a good reason for lying to Sergeant Fortney about measuring the distance. Well, he observed bitterly, in a way Walden had a good reason, but just not one that Owen deemed remotely acceptable.

Not knowing who to share his suspicions with without sounding like a child who believed every shadow was a monster, and still hoping that Walden would be able to convince him that he was innocent, after all, Owen looked around at the crowd gathered around the pyre, trying to spot Walden. When he couldn't, he asked Davis in one breath, "Where's Walden?"

"In the barracks. He said he couldn't bear to watch Seth's body burn and that he would prefer to mourn alone."

"Yesterday I would have fallen for such a story, too," snorted Owen. Oh, yes, he could just picture Walden taking advantage of the empty barracks to contact his masters with details about the impending major Tortallan offensive.

"What do ye mean?" Davis arched an eyebrow at him. "It's a bit weird that Walden wants to be alone right now, but he's always been odd in a harmless sort of manner. Ye know that—ye're a friend of his."

"I don't think Walden is half as harmless as he wants us to believe," said Owen flatly. Suddenly realizing fully what a crowded location he was in, he muttered, "I'll explain somewhere more private."

Before Davis could reply, Owen tapped Lucian, who was standing in front of them and who probably had overheard most of their conversation, on the shoulder. Looking as puzzled as Davis, Lucian followed Owen away from the mass of mourners to a secluded spot in the shadow of the barracks.

After glancing over his shoulder to ensure that they truly were alone, Owen hissed, "I know who poisoned the oatmeal. It was Walden. I saw him steal something from the storage area while we were both volunteering at the infirmary. I thought at the time it was herbs to cure colds, but—"

"Nobody gets colds durin' the summer," cut in Lucian. "Colds are a winter ailment."

"Exactly," Owen agreed through a parchment-dry throat. Hearing how awful his voice sounded, he ran his tongue across his lips to moisten them. Sadly, that did not improve matters much, for his tongue did not seem to be wet at all. "If Walden wasn't taking herbs to cure colds from storage, it's possible he was helping himself to a supply of juice of belladonna, instead."

"Hold on." Davis raised a hand. "Ye two are movin' too rapidly for my likin'. It's suspicious that Walden was diggin' about in the storage room and removin' stuff, but one bit of odd behavior from a batty man does not treason make, especially not when there are any number of items he could have stolen. Remember, healers have all sorts of medicinal herbs that create all kinds of pleasurable sensations and delightful daydreams in a person. Some soldiers are addicted to them, and will do anythin' in their power to lay their hands on them. Such behavior is reprehensible and grounds enough for a court martial, but it ain't sabotage or murder, neither."

"Maybe we've discovered why Walden enjoys talkin' to himself sometimes. The drugs move him to it." Lucian chuckled softly, but Owen's frown remained entrenched on his face.

"You're right that one suspicious activity doesn't make a spy," he conceded, "but several does. Isn't it odd how Walden didn't want me to fetch a healer this morning? Isn't it almost as though he had something to conceal? Isn't it peculiar that Walden volunteered to help me with latrine duty on the day the waste hole was dug that resulted in the tainted water, especially considering he was the one who decided where to dig that hole and lied about measuring the distance from the well? I mean, isn't volunteering for latrine duty in itself suspicious behavior?"

"He just didn't want ye workin' alone." Lucian shrugged. "He said he didn't want ye to suffer by yerself. Besides, he claimed that he owed ye after all the times ye visited him in the sick ward. Last time I checked, acts of charity weren't crimes."

Oh, but they could be when they involved turning a blind eye to a friend's suspicious activities for reasons that couldn't help but appear flimsy when scrutinized later.

"That's essentially what he told me when we began doing latrine duty together, and I believed him then, but now I don't," responded Owen, his mouth hardening into a firm line. "Now I reckon he was up to something more sinister. Now I think that when he misestimated the four or five yards from the well as six yards, it was intentional, not accidental, especially since he told me himself that he was digging holes for waste ever since he was a boy. Now I suspect that it was his goal all along to contaminate the water. Now I believe that he wanted to dishearten the fort, and sicken or kill as many soldiers as possible."

"In short, ye're accusin' Walden of bein' our spy." Davis bit his lip. "Well, every spy has to contact his homeland in order to transfer his information and receive instructions, but ye know as well as I do that Walden never gets mail of any type. How does he communicate with his masters if he doesn't ever receive any mail?"

It was Owen's turn to chomp his lip. For some reason, this had never occurred to him, and, for a blissful moment, he felt as though he could hug Davis for dismantling his Walden-is-a-traitor theory. After all, Walden was his friend, and Owen didn't wish to discover that he was really a spy any more than he longed to be devoured by Stormwings. Unfortunately, his mind betrayed him by whispering nastily that Walden was Gifted, and that magicians had special methods of exchanging information…

"Walden doesn't need to swap coded letters with his superiors," he explained dully. "Walden is Gifted, which means that if he wears a gemstone necklace, he can transmit information to another mage. It's the same magic that makes scrying effective, isn't it?"

"But all Walden's Gift is good for is showin' him events that are happenin' in the present if they are particularly awful or somethin'," argued Lucian. "He can't do anything else with it."

"So he claims." Owen was confident that the words emerged from someone else's mouth, because he would never doubt a friend like this. "His magic is remarkably specialized for someone who never received any formal training in it, though, isn't it? Isn't it possible that if Walden lied to us about the limitations of his Gift or the education he received in it, he really could be talking to somebody else in code with it?"

"I—I don't know what to think." Lucian massaged his forehead as if he were afflicted with a horrible migraine, a feeling Owen sympathized with immensely at the present. "I don't want to believe that someone who sleeps on the bunk below me at night would sell me out to the enemy. I don't want to think that a squadmate could watch another squadmate die from eatin' food he had poisoned. I don't want to start turnin' on my neighbors because they're quirky when that's probably what the Scanrans desire. After all, if we begin attackin' each other, we'll defeat ourselves in a few months for them, won't we?"

"Do you imagine that I want Walden to be a spy?" snapped Owen, feeling suddenly defensive, as though Lucian's final comment somehow constituted a personal assault. "Do you believe even for a moment that I want to have confided my secrets in a traitor? Do you honestly think that I wish to know that I made his job easier by keeping silent when I should have spoken out? Mithros, Lucian, I hope Walden is innocent as much as you do. If he is a traitor, though, I have to know, so I can put a stop to him and prevent myself from unknowingly abetting him in the future."

"Stop squabblin', ye two," Davis intervened, his voice cracking. "We'll just go and see what Walden is up to right now. If he's doin' anythin' suspicious, we'll report what we suspect to Lord Wyldon and let him handle the matter from there. If he's not doin' anythin' odd, we'll watch him ourselves for awhile and discover what comes of us doin' a bit of our own snoopin'."

The idea of spying on a friend made Owen nauseous. Mistrusting someone whose loyalty he had once taken for granted in much the same fashion he did the sun and moon caused his stomach to perform disconcerted somersaults. Right now, having this conversation behind Walden's back with Davis and Lucian made him feel like the traitor. At the present, he was convinced that he was filthier than mud, and, no matter how many baths he took, he would never be clean again. The fetid stench of guilt and guile would remain with him forever. Even when he was with Margarry, the dulcet scent of her rosewater would not drown it out of his nostrils.

Yet, he had gone far beyond the point of no returning in regard to accusing Walden of espionage and sabotage. Not only would attempting to wade out of the deep waters he had dived into be cowardly, by now it would be futile. Now, he was in way over his head. His only option was to swim with the current, praying that it wouldn't bash him against a jagged rock, but rather would deposit him gingerly upon some sandy beach where he could breathe again.

"The plan works for me," he assented, moving lips that seemed to have been replaced with stones.

"I don't wish to turn on my own squadmate," whispered Lucian, appearing as torn as Owen felt. "However, I want to find the monster that poisoned Seth—even if he is Walden—so that he can be killed himself. I reckon that if Walden is a spy, he wasn't worthy of my devotion or affection in the first place. If he's innocent, then I've already betrayed him with my doubts, and I'll have to live with the shame of knowin' that I believed the absolute worst of him, but, at this point, goin' a step further in the betrayal won't matter overmuch."

Wondering glumly whether this sort of philosophy had permitted Walden to betray those around him on a regular basis, Owen raced into the barracks with Davis and Lucian. As they dashed inside, they heard frenzied muttering that ceased almost immediately upon their entry, and, as they neared the bunks on which Davis' squad slept, they saw Walden spread-eagled on his cot, shoving a chain underneath his shirt.

Faster than an arrow shooting from an archer's bow, Davis snatched Walden's weapons from beneath his bunk. Then, as Davis patted him down, searching for more weapons, Walden, looking as though he had just been slapped across the face, asked, "What are ye doin'? Did ye have too much to drink again? It isn't a good idea to get completely wasted when yer grievin', ye know."

Satisfied that Walden wasn't carrying any more weapons on him, Davis' hands clenched around Walden's neck. The next instant there was a metallic snap as a clasp broke, and a chain bearing a sparkling rhinestone came away in Davis' fingers.

"Ye killed Seth!" spat Lucian, pointing a condemning finger at the glistening gemstone in Davis' hand.

"Grief is messin' up yer perspective on things." Walden's face and voice were obviously intended to be placid, but a furrowing forehead and a quaver revealed that he wasn't nearly as composed as he pretended. "Seth's death was a tragic accident. I'm no more accountable for his death than ye are, and I'm every bit as distraught as ye. I don't know where yer delusion that I'm to blame for Seth's death came from, Lucian, but I suggest we discuss it later when ye've had time to collect yerself."

"You lying, cowardly bastard," shouted Owen. Under other circumstances, he might have been astonished by his employment of a term he rarely thought, nonetheless said. Now, though, bastard seemed like an absolutely acceptable term for Walden. If the word distressed Walden, that was even better, for it would provide Owen the opportunity to siphon some of the pain and ire building up inside him into Walden. Right now, blood thundered in his ears, and he couldn't stomach looking at his backstabbing former friend, nor did he want to listen to another one of the silken stories Walden spun like spider webs to ensnare the unwary. "You poisoned the oatmeal that killed Seth. That makes you responsible for his death."

"Ye didn't even like Seth," retorted Walden, abandoning any attempt at serenity. "Ye'd have gladly eaten his guts for breakfast. There's no need for ye to act devastated because he's dead."

"This isn't an act. Seth annoyed me, yes, but I didn't hate him." Owen's hands felt as if they were burning with wrath as they rested upon the hilt of his sword, which he was ready to draw if Walden made so much as one sudden movement. "I certainly didn't want him dead. After all, he was worth fifty of you. At least he didn't murder someone who had saved his life. At least he didn't betray his friends. At least he didn't poison the food of people he ate with. At least he didn't tell the secrets confided in him to the enemy. At least he didn't commit treason."

"Oh, of course, because yer treason is the only kind that can be justified," snarled Walden. "Wait. Yer's never happened. How could I have forgotten?"

"My brand of treason didn't kill any Tortallans." At the moment, when all he wanted to do was chop off Walden's cunning head to silence his horrid mouth forever, Owen's couldn't understand how he had ever turned to Walden for comfort when he was worried about Margarry being trapped in the siege at the City of the Gods.

"It doesn't matter." Walden waved a hand, glossing over this. "After all, I didn't really commit treason. Treason is betrayin' yer country, and I'm not Tortallan. I'm a born and bred Scanran. By spyin' on ye, I'm bein' every bit as loyal to my country as ye are bein' to yers by capturin' me."

"You're a Scanran?" repeated Owen, as dazed as if Walden had declared that he was a slug. For some reason, even when he had suspected Walden of being a Scanran spy, it had never entered his mind that the man might be anything other than a Tortallan turncoat who had forsaken his country for a decent amount of gold. Then, as a thought bubbled up inside him, he exclaimed, "That's why you don't get letters and packages from your family—not because you're a disappointment to them, but because your superiors don't want anyone knowing where you're located."

To think that Owen had once pitied Walden's plight and shared the precious treats Margarry had sent him.

"No," Walden answered, his face contracting. "I don't receive notes and packages from my family because I don't have any family left. Of course, if I did, then my superiors would never allow me to have contact with them while I was a spy. Then again, I would never have become a spy if my family were still alive."

"What do you mean?" Owen demanded, frowning. He didn't comprehend fully why he posed the question. After all, Walden's history and motivations for spying made little difference, since, in the end, every exposed spy must be executed. Yet, somehow, he felt an unexplainable compulsion to hear how someone he had always treated as kindly as he knew how could manipulate and betray him.

"I mean that when I was seven, followers of a neighboring warlord attacked my village, slaughterin' everyone," Walden burst out, as though some psychological dam inside him had been breached, permitting painful memories to pour out of him at last. "I mean that in one day I lost the giggling of my younger sisters and the teasing of my older brother. I mean that in one dreadful day I was deprived of the care of my mother and the guidance of my father. I mean that in one fell swoop everyone I had ever been familiar with—aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, and neighbors—were erased from this world as completely as if they had never existed in the first place. I mean that their houses and shops were burned to ashes, and their crops and any scant valuables they might have possessed stolen. I mean that I would have joined them in death if I hadn't been hunting in the forest. I mean that if it weren't for my Gift, I would have been far away enough not to have seen my village eradicated. I mean that if I had the knack at prophecy, I could have seen into the future enough to save them."

"Ye weren't lyin' about yer inability to predict the future then," noted Davis in a tone as frigid as an ice cap. "I thought ye might have been, given that ye can use magic to communicate through that gemstone of yers just fine."

"Oh, ye reckon that I had a premonition of what happened at Giantkiller before it transpired," Walden murmured. "Well, I have to disappoint ye, because I didn't. I received the vision as it was happenin'. I decided to share it with ye Tortallans to earn yer trust, but I made certain to wait until my people would have been gone long enough that by the time ye arrived the trail would be cold."

"I can't believe I felt sorry for the agony that I thought you had suffered when you endured visions of the massacre at Giantkiller alone," snorted Owen, contempt scorching his throat and tongue. "What a fool I was, trying to console you with sweets when you probably couldn't have been happier with your side's bloody victory."

"Ye have my sympathy, Tanner, if that's even yer real name and if that sob story ye told us was even true, for what happened to yer home village," said Lucian, whose whole body was trembling. "If ye experienced firsthand the pain of havin' yer village destroyed, that just makes yer helpin' the Scanrans destroy our villages all the worse, though. I don't understand how ye could choose to create so many new orphans after what ye claim to have went through."

"Ye Tortallans are always talkin' about life as though any of us really have got a choice in it," growled Walden. "Ye may have founded schools for yer grubby commoner children, but ye don't know enough facts about life to fill an acorn top. Ye haven't waged a true civil war against each other for generations, not since the controversy over the upstart Contes seizin' the throne faded away. Sure, ye've had a couple of treasonous plots, but they've all been foiled quickly. Yes, ye've fought the Bazhir, but those battles were confined to a desert and ended anticlimactically when yer king became their spiritual leader. Ye don't know what it's like to have to grow up constantly fearin' attacks from yer fellow countrymen. Yer nobles vie for power, but they do it in the court, rather than on the battlefield like our leaders do. Yer crops grow when ye plant them unlike ours. Ye don't understand that anyone orphaned in Scanra would have no option except runnin' to the nearest clan chief and beggin' for assistance. Ye don't comprehend that no clan leader would ever show true mercy or charity toward an orphan, and that any orphan who didn't have the wit to swear fealty to the nearest warlord would die of hunger or exposure to the elements within weeks. Of course, any orphan that threw himself upon the nonexistent mercy of a warlord would be required to serve that chief in battle, and, later on, if that chief ordered that orphan to become a spy, that orphan could no more disobey than he could transform himself into a butterfly. After all, Scanrans who disobey their warlords are torn limb from limb by their fellow soldiers."

Quiet, broken only by the sounds of the mourners in the courtyard, filled the barracks for a long moment after Walden's rant. Then, Davis announced crisply, "We've heard enough to convict Tanner, assuming that's his real surname, which it probably isn't, of espionage at least nine times over, especially since there are three of us to serve as witness against him. Let's not waste any more time listenin' to his petty excuses."

"They aren't excuses," Walden countered in a mutinous mutter. "They're facts. Ye just don't want to hear them, but that doesn't make them untrue."

"I didn't say they were untrue. I said they were excuses, which can be lies or truths." Davis spared Walden a frosty, withering glare before focusing his attention on Owen and Lucian once more. "I'll go report to Lord Wyldon that we've a rat called Walden Tanner in our midst while ye two stand guard over our spy to ensure that he doesn't slink off like the vermin he is, unless ye think that ye should be the one to tell Lord Wyldon, Owen, since yer his squire."

"I don't want to tell Lord Wyldon." Owen shook his head, his eyes fixed on Walden. "I want to remain with our prisoner while you do."

"Very well. Make sure that Tanner doesn't flee," commanded Davis. "If he attempts to run, detain him by any means necessary. Ye have my permission to kill him if ye must, but it would be best if ye didn't. It's best to interrogate spies and sap all the information out of them that ye can before ye kill them."

Once Owen and Lucian had nodded their comprehension, Davis marched out of the barracks. In his wake, he left a frozen tableau of Owen and Lucian pointing their swords menacingly at Walden, and Walden staring at them both, his gaze shockingly steady.

"It would be merciful to let me escape," he stated.

"You dare talk of mercy?" Owen gawked at Walden, wondering how he had ever been close to such a loathsome scumbag. "You have the nerve to do so when you passed along classified military information to the enemy that could lead to the deaths of hundreds of men? Is that your idea of mercy?"

"Ye have a habit of leakin' classified military information yerself," snickered Walden.

"I never intentionally provided intelligence to the enemy, and I never do anything that I believe will lead to the deaths of hundreds of my countrymen," Owen snapped, irate at Walden for reminding him of the early warning he had given Walden of the major offensive when they had been doing latrine duty together. This man was unfathomably evil if he could gloat over abusing a young man's trust. "It's to my lasting shame that I put my faith in a scumbag like you, but at least what I did was an honest blunder, instead of calculated sabotage."

"Scumbag is a harsh term," remarked Walden in an unsettlingly level fashion. "I wasn't as false a friend to ye as ye imagine."

"Really?" Owen arched his eyebrows. "I think the only reason that you bothered pretending to be friends with me was because I was Wyldon's squire. You hoped that if you got close to me, I would share important information with you."

"Yer right that's why I cultivated yer acquaintance at first," admitted Walden, blunt and utterly unabashed. "In a short time, I came to be genuinely fond of ye, however. Ye admired me a great deal and turned to me for advice. It would take a far humbler man than me to resist the admiration of an earnest young man."

"You took advantage of the esteem I held you in," Owen exploded, his cheeks flaming. "Whenever you could, you strove to lower my desire to fight, and I can't believe I respected your capacity for mercy when you reprimanded me for how I treated Blayce and Stenmun's corpses when that really must have been nothing more than a spy's grief at the death of two of his powerful leaders."

"I didn't want to take advantage of ye, Owen." Walden's expression was oddly vulnerable. "Ye'll never know much it tormented me to do it. That's why the day we were diggin' the waste hole together I tried to warn ye about bein' careful who ye trusted." Here, he emitted a bitter chuckle. "A good spy would never have done that, and a good spy would never have become attached to any of the enemy. A good spy would never have gotten close enough to anyone to allow any individual to guess his identity. Of course, I never had it in me to be a good spy. After all, a spy ought to be circumspect, and I was forever attracting attention to myself due to my many eccentricities."

Since Owen had no notion of how to respond to this, he was somewhat relieved when Walden continued, "I wasn't cut out to be a spy, nor was I born to be a soldier, although fate forced me to fulfill both roles. If it were up to me, I would have been nothin' more than a common farmer, raisin' crops and children, and botherin' nobody. Keep that in mind when ye judge me, Owen. Ye remember what I said about bein' as merciful as ye possibly can when ye judge others, don't ye?"

"I've shown you more than enough mercy already," Owen snapped. "I was merciful when I supported your lie about the distance of the waste hole from the well by not contradicting your story, even though I should have. I was merciful when I didn't report your stealing from the storage room in the infirmary, even though I ought to have. On both occasions, I was wrong to be merciful, because all my mercy led to was more sickness and death for innocent people."

"Well, if ye won't show me mercy and allow me to flee, then I'll have to fight ye." A veil seemed to fall across Walden's face as he spoke. "I don't want to be tortured until death itself is a mercy, after all."


	43. Chapter 43

Daggers and Denial

Even before he finished speaking, Walden had withdrawn two shining, sharp steel daggers from inside his boots, which Davis had obviously failed to detect during his search. Seeing the weapons Walden had pulled out, Owen rapidly calculated that, at such close quarters, a knife would be better against a dagger than a sword. As quickly as he could, and praising Mithros for not letting his fingers fumble at such a crucial moment, he shoved his sword back into its sheath and drew his own dagger, while, at his side, Lucian also returned his sword to his hilt and yanked out a dagger, instead.

While Owen and Lucian had been accomplishing this weapons transfer, Walden had stepped forward, completely closing the distance between the three of them, and launched his first attack with one gleaming knife surging at Owen and the other thrusting at Lucian. Since he had only just pulled out his own dagger, Owen didn't have time to parry the assault. Instead, he dodged.

After that, he discovered that, even though he and Lucian outnumbered Walden, he was hopelessly disadvantaged in this confrontation, not because he did not know how to fight with a dagger, but because his treacherous heart didn't want to do battle with Walden at all, despite the fact that earlier he had longed to behead Walden himself. Without the will to fight, half the battle was lost already, and Owen knew that his knightmaster would probably kill him for his half-hearted assaults and sloppy blocks.

However, even picturing Lord Wyldon's most disapproving glower couldn't force him to focus fully on the fight, rely on his instincts, and ignore every other thought or emotion as an unnecessary distraction. Since he lacked the discipline to pay the proper attention to the confrontation, it wasn't surprising that, even with Lucian defending him as much as possible, Owen's wrists, arms, and legs were quickly lined with bloody cuts.

Normally, the numbness and adrenaline that flooded him in battle prevented him from feeling pain until after the fray concluded. Now, however, fire burned him where Walden's knife penetrated his flesh, but the agony that scorched him was welcome, because it took his mind off the roaring anguish in his mind. Every unenthusiastic attack he bullied himself into making wounded him far more than it did his foe, since it struck directly at his heart and soul to attempt to injure someone he had cared for in an infirmary. Similarly, every offensive the man he had believed was his loyal friend orchestrated was successful even if no blows were landed merely because every time his adversary took a swing at him, a part of his spirit was drained when he realized that someone he had liked and trusted so much would want to hurt him.

Somehow, in the mayhem of the duel that he wasn't paying much mind to, Owen found himself knocked onto the ground. In the process, his head banged against the floor, and constellations danced in his eyes for a second. When his vision cleared, he recognized that Walden had straddled him and was preparing to plunge his dagger into Owen's chest.

Suddenly, the fire and spirit that always filled Owen and burned even more brightly when he was in battle, returned to him. He would not die without a decent struggle. His life was too precious to be stamped out without a fight. He wouldn't allow himself to be killed without making a last, glorious stand. Certainly, he wasn't about to permit himself to become another one of Walden's corpses. Compassion had its place, but he had already permitted Walden to cause enough havoc with it. Now, was a time when compassion was crippling, because, as long as Walden was cruel enough to employ brutal tactics that Owen wouldn't, Walden would win.

That was unacceptable. Walden couldn't be allowed to shed any more Tortallan blood, nor could he be permitted to escape. He must pay for his crimes.

Now wasn't the time for mercy; it was the moment for ruthless justice. It was the time to slap the dagger out of Walden's hand and plunge his own weapon into Walden's chest. It was the moment to grit his teeth as the knife carved through Walden's ribcage and ripped into his heart. It was the time not to cringe as Walden's blood poured out of his chest, staining Owen's hands and arms with blood so that he could no longer discern which crimson fluid originated from himself and which from his opponent. It was the time not to gaze into Walden's eyes as the wild, cornered animal look in them shifted first to a startled, agonized one and then into a forever blank one. It was the time not to flinch as Walden's body sagged onto him.

When Walden collapsed upon him, the breath was knocked out of Owen, and, abruptly, now that the peril had passed, he found himself overcome by pain and fatigue. Before he could figure out what was happening, his whole world blacked out. In the distant regions of his mind that still functioned behind the dark curtain that had fallen over his entire existence, he felt as though he had perished without glimpsing the brilliant light that everyone insisted greeted a person as they sailed onto judgment in the Divine Realms, progressing onto what was hopefully a pleasant afterlife.

Oh, well. That didn't really matter, since at least the agony was gone, and that was all that truly was significant. After all, living, he could only see now after he had struggled so hard and ultimately so fruitlessly, it seemed, to cling to life, was really rather overrated. Sleep was leagues better.

Sometime later-it could have been minutes, hours, or years as far as he knew and cared—the darkness dominating his brain was intruded upon as a burgeoning luminescence started to conquer his mind, beginning in one corner and expanding like a plague to control the rest of it within what felt like a few moments.

Apparently, he was finally approaching the light that the priests and priestesses declared was present when a spirit approached the Divine Realms, which was all very well, although he did not comprehend why the pain inside his head was increasing when at least the oblivion had afforded him the relative mercy of numbness. It just didn't seem fair that, after dying so young, he would have to suffer in the hereafter, too. Of course, it probably wasn't prudent to question the wisdom and justice of the gods when he was about to be summoned before the final tribunal of the Black God's court…

His eyelids must have flickered or he must have offered some other indication of dawning awareness, for a voice asked, "Owen?"

Hmm…oddly enough, that voice wasn't the Black God's. In fact, it was an awfully familiar voice, even if Owen had never encountered that particular, almost hesitant tone. That voice didn't pose inquiries; it issued orders. That voice never sounded concerned; it was always confident. Yet, it had asked a question in a tone that had sounded worried, and the fact that it had suggested that Owen wasn't dead, after all.

In the past, he would have expected that elation would deluge him at such a notion, but in the present, he discovered that he was too exhausted and battered to care. All he knew at the moment was that the fact that he was alive explained why he was afflicted with a headache the size of a mountain and was covered with what seemed to be a million punctures that made him feel as if he had just been dragged through a rosebush backward.

Well, if he was alive, he had to respond to that voice. No matter how much it might have bordered on hesitant, that voice was still the embodiment of authority in his life. Slowly, he opened his eyes, an endeavor that was far more complicated than usual since some malicious or incompetent healer had clearly replaced his eyelids with boulders, and took a groggy reconnaissance of his surroundings.

He was lying on a cot that didn't have the comfortable indents of his body that his own bed did. He was in a room that was far emptier than his own and had the sterile quality of the infirmary about it. Nobody else was in the room except for Lord Wyldon, who was seated in a chair beside his bed. That was probably because nobles could depend on getting their own quarters in a sick ward, especially when it wasn't overflowing with soldiers from a major battle.

Well, that answered the question of where he was, at least. Now, he just had to ascertain why he was here, since, when he searched his memory for how he had come to be injured, all he uncovered was blackness. It was as though his mind had formed a scab to prevent him from revisting a trauma he had already been forced to undergo once.

"Why am I here?" His words came out as a croak.

Lord Wyldon didn't respond. Instead, he placed his hands on Owen's back and carefully rearranged him so that he was reclining against the cot's pillows. Then, Wyldon brought a steaming mug of herbal tea to his lips, instructing, "Drink this. You were unconscious and covered with cuts when we carried you in here. The healers have sealed all but the shallowest wounds, but you need to replenish your strength and this will make you feel better."

Willing to swallow even the most revolting medicine at the moment if it would make him feel even slightly better, Owen gulped down the tea, not even noticing that it seared his throat. When the cup was empty, Wyldon returned it to the bedside table, and Owen realized that he did, indeed, feel mildly rejuvenated. At any rate, his headache was now only approximately the size of a hill, and he only felt like he had been dragged through a rosebush forward, not backward. That was quite a blessing.

"Why am I here?" he repeated, relieved that he wasn't rasping any more.

"You don't remember?" Wyldon arched an eyebrow.

Owen restrained himself from pointing out that if he remembered what had occurred, he wouldn't have bothered wasting the breath asking twice, because, out of nowhere, the mist in his mind washed away, and he could recall some of the events that had led to him being here. He remembered how his heart had been torn asunder when he first started suspecting Walden of being a spy. He could vividly see in his head himself racing into the barracks with Davis and Lucian. He recalled the anger that had boiled in him when Walden had confessed his betrayal. He even remembered the hurricane of pain and disbelief that had raged through him when Walden withdrew daggers from his boots and attacked him and Lucian with them.

After that, though, he could recall nothing, and he demanded anxiously, "What happened to Walden? Is Lucian okay, sir?"

"Lucian is fine. The healers patched him up hours ago, and he is sleeping with the other soldiers in the barracks now," replied Wyldon. "As for Walden, he is dead."

Owen allowed himself a second of relief at hearing that Lucian was fine, which then yielded to confusion as to whether he should be glad or aggrieved that Walden had been killed.

"Lucian killed Walden, then, sir?" he pressed, thinking that more details might help him determine whether he should be happy or sad at Walden's demise.

"No." Wyldon met Owen's eyes squarely. "You did."

"I didn't!" Frantically, Owen shook his head. Almost instantly, he regretted the fervor of the motion when he found himself seasick on land. "I wouldn't! I couldn't!"

After all, he hadn't even wanted to fight Walden. Essentially, he had abstained from the battle and permitted Walden to carve gigantic chunks out of him. When he was so reluctant to fight, there was no way he could kill someone whom he had once loved, and whom he still loved, because love wasn't rational. It didn't die even when a dreadful betrayal should have slaughtered it.

"Calm yourself, Squire," Wyldon commanded. Although his tone was as brusque as ever, his eyes were soft, and the hands he rested on Owen's shoulders were soothing. Within a moment, the quaking Owen's body had been doing without his knowledge or permission ceased. "I don't wish to have to explain to the healers that you managed to give yourself a heart attack thanks to your penchant for needless dramatics."

"They aren't needless, my lord," protested Owen, sticking out his chin but refraining from shaking his head, since that would make him dizzy. "I didn't kill Walden. I would remember if I had."

"Owen, you didn't even remember how you were injured. I can promise you that it was your knife in Walden's heart, and you that his corpse had fallen upon. Whether or not you are prepared to accept it, you killed Walden," Lord Wyldon answered.

There was something about the unique combination of firmness and gentleness in his knightmaster's voice that cracked Owen's denial. Somehow, that tone hammered into his skull that it would violate the very core of Lord Wyldon of Cavall to lie. Yet, if his knightmaster was telling the truth, then that meant Owen was lying…

No, he wouldn't even entertain such an outrageous possibility. However, even the second's thought had been all it had required to raise another hurtful memory. Even a second's doubt was enough for him to recall how Walden had straddled him, how Walden's dagger had been about to plunge into his vulnerable chest, how he savagely removed the knife from Walden's fingers, and how he had ruthlessly driven his own dagger into Walden's heart. Bile blazed up his throat as he remembered the man's blood sliding down his arms and mingling with his own. Self-loathing convulsed him as he thought about the life ebbing from Walden's colorless eyes.

"I didn't remember killing Walden until now, my lord," he choked out, and then was appalled by how pathetic he sounded. "I didn't mean to lie to you. I told you what I thought was the truth."

"I know, Owen." Wyldon squeezed his squire's shoulder in reassurance, and a fraction of the tension coiling in Owen's stomach eased. "You were in denial. It happens to soldiers often enough. When the brain is overwhelmed, it will protect itself by refusing to accept events that are too much for it to deal with. Some see it as a mercy our minds show us by allowing us to deny truths too terrible for us to confront, but it is also a hindrance. Reality must be faced, and the longer we refuse to accept the facts, the harder it becomes to do so."

"It's cowardly to lie to yourself, but that's what I did." Owen could feel tears pricking like needles at his eyes now, but he didn't care. After all, what was a little more pain when the rest of his body was aching already?

"Anyone can be…traumatized." Again, Wyldon's grip tightened on his shoulder, and Owen was rather astonished that his knightmaster had maintained physical contact for so long. While Lord Wyldon wasn't as frigid with his squire as Owen had at first imagined he would be, it was still true that he confined most of his touching to impersonal modifications of fighting stances. Even his rare displays of affection seemed to be restricted to isolated knee swats and shoulder squeezes. "I'm here to help you and guide you through this. I won't abandon you, but I won't lie to you, either."

"I shouldn't even be traumatized," Owen snuffled, wishing that Wyldon would bark at him. That would force him to stop blubbering like this. "Walden was a spy. He deserved to die. He needed to be killed. I know that, but I hate myself for being the one to do the dirty deed. It makes me feel like the traitor. Part of me despises myself for killing him, and the other half of me is cross at me because I am upset at his death at all, sir."

"You needn't feel guilty. Walden was never a good friend to you," observed Wyldon. "Every time he was with you, he was living a lie."

"That doesn't absolve me of the responsibility of being a good friend to him, my lord," Owen argued miserably.

"In a way, even when you killed him, you proved you were a better friend to him than he ever was to you. After a fashion, killing him was a mercy."

"A mercy?" echoed Owen, as though he had never heard such a word used before.

"Yes, a mercy." Briskly, Wyldon nodded. "Captured spies are rarely granted any sort of clemency. Once they are caught, they are interrogated and compelled to reveal any secrets they posses about the enemy, which often aren't many. Typically, spies are even more resilient beings than warriors, and it requires much to break them. Normally, it is necessary to call in a healer to convince captured spies to tell all they know about the enemy's activities."

"You mean healers are summoned to torture captured spies, sir?" Owen stuttered, his jaw gaping open. "That doesn't make sense. Healers cure people; they don't hurt them."

"If healers can mend bones, they can shatter them. If healers can restore bloodflow, they can cut it off. If healers can seal wounds, they can create them. If healers can soothe a sore throat, they can make one feel like sharp stones are grating against it repeatedly. If healers can fix blood vessels, they can also stretch them until they pop or feel as if they are about to do so." Wyldon's eyes shadowed, and Owen suspected that his knightmaster had witnessed at least one person—probably more—being tortured in such a fashion and heard their piercing screams. As Owen shuddered, Wyldon went on, "In such cases, every spy cracks in the end. By then, the spy doesn't even hope that his life will be spared if he provides the necessary information. All he cares about is surrendering all he knows, so that the enemy will finally allow him to die and the pain can end at last. You spared Walden from that gruesome fate, and gave him a quick death that he never would have been able to hope for otherwise."

"I'm glad that I saved Walden from being tortured, but I can't regard what I did as an act of mercy," admitted Owen, fiddling with his blanket. "When I killed him, I wasn't thinking of him. I was just worried about saving myself, my lord. What I did was ruthlessness, not compassion."

"Nobody can fault you for valuing your life above a spy's." Wyldon shrugged. "Whether or not you intended to, you showed him a mercy by killing him quickly when he was slated for an agonizingly slow end. That should be some comfort to you."

"So it's a mercy to kill someone swiftly in battle if they will suffer a protracted death, but it's not a mercy to do the same thing if the person is in a sickbed, sir?" frowned Owen, recalling Davis' comments about juice of belladonna.

"I presume that you are referring to my stance on healers distributing juice of belladonna to hopeless patients," remarked Lord Wyldon coldly.

"I was, my lord." Owen nodded, even though he was starting to regret broaching the issue.

"I suppose that you, like nearly every progressive in the land, believe that I am wrong," grunted Lord Wyldon, stroking the scars that marred his features pensively. "I surmise you think that I would deny the dying of their dignity, even though a person has no dignity left if they are in such torment that they are willing to swallow a vat of poison to stop the pain. By the time a person reaches a state like that, they are in no condition to make an intelligent decision about such a serious matter as ending their own lives, no matter what the progressives say about an individual's right to choose."

"Sir, it was just a question." Owen tried to appease him with this. "It wasn't a statement of opinion."

"It was an impertinent question, Squire," corrected Lord Wyldon tartly. "It was a question that had a clear bias inherent in it. A slanted question reveals an opinion as well as anything."

"I don't have an opinion yet," Owen persisted, his tone verging on testy. "Davis only told me about how healers use juice of belladonna a little while ago. I haven't had time to form an opinion. That's why I asked you about it, my lord."

"Very well." After a brief pause, Lord Wyldon relented. "Then, I shall explain to you, Owen, that I do not approve of juice of belladonna being given to hopeless patients. In a battle, a person has the opportunity to fight the being that would kill them, but a person has no chance of defeating juice of belladonna. Besides, hopeless patients are not always as hopeless as healers believe, and sometimes miracles do happen. At any rate, distributing poison to them is condoning suicide, and if it's their time, the Black God can snatch them up himself. It is unwise to offend the gods by trespassing upon their territory. Wars have been waged since the beginning of time, but these so-called mercy killings are a very new invention."

"I still don't know what to think." Again, Owen found himself toying with his blanket. "I am sure that I would never take juice of belladonna myself. Even if I wanted to die, a part of me wouldn't wish to surrender to it and would cling to life, instead. Even when I am convinced something is impossible, something inside me still believes it can be done. I don't know whether not taking the poison would be the right thing for me, nonetheless everyone else. I certainly can't say whether it's braver to accept death and swallow the poison, or to keep on fighting death, even though it seems futile to do so."

Before Wyldon could respond, Owen changed the subject, saying, "My lord, Walden had reported to the Scanrans the battle plans before we had a chance to stop him."

"I know. Davis told me," Wyldon informed him grimly. "I have already obtained General Vanget's approval for a modified battle plan. I think it could work to our advantage that Walden transmitted the old battle plans before he was captured. We will be able to surprise the enemy with our different strategies, and we can predict how they will be set up to combat how they think we will place our troops."

"But, sir, won't the Scanrans suspect that Walden has been captured if he doesn't contact them after he hurriedly ended a communication with them?" asked Owen dubiously.

"Probably not." Wyldon shook his head. "Frequent communications attract attention, so it is not uncommon for spies to refrain from passing messages onto their superiors for days and even weeks at a time. During preparations for an offensive, regular communications would risk rising even more suspicion, so when Walden doesn't contact the Scanrans further, they will assume that he has nothing more to tell them and doesn't want to ruin his cover. As for the hastily ended conversation, those probably occurred often enough, since it would invite notice if Walden was regularly observed talking to a gemstone."

"I see." Owen nodded, and then announced, "My lord, I want to participate in the offensive two days from now."

"If the healers decide that you are well enough to ride to the banks of the Vassa tomorrow evening, and still will be fit to fight the next morning, you may come." Here, Wyldon paused to gaze sternly at his squire before resuming, "If they conclude otherwise, you will remain here and get the rest you need to recover properly, or I'll be most displeased with you."

"Sir, if I believe I'm fit to ride and fight, why do we need to involve the healers at all?" scowled Owen, who suspected that the healers would not pronounce him ready for battle when whenever he moved his head, the world seemed to split into three different planes. "Don't I know the limits of my body better than the healers do?"

"We need to involve the healers, because you have a habit of not recognizing what is best for you." As he established as much, Wyldon's face grew even sterner. "As I result, I do not trust you to decide for yourself whether you are ready to go into battle so soon after you have been injured."

"But—"

"No buts. The most generous answer you will get from me, Squire, is that if the healers say you may go, you may." Wyldon held up a hand to curtail his protest. "If you continue to argue with me, I can always change my response to a simple no."

"My lord, I haven't been in a real battle since June." Owen tried again, reasoning that pleading wasn't exactly arguing.

"It doesn't matter how long you haven't been in a real battle," snapped Lord Wyldon. "If you're not in the right state for fighting, you won't go into this battle. However much you'd like me to be, I will not be the irresponsible knightmaster who sends an injured squire into a battle where he stands a far greater chance of dying or being crippled than if he wasn't wounded."

Biting his lip and resisting the urge to sink further into his pillows, because, while all this arguing was draining, he didn't want Wyldon to think he was weak, Owen complained to himself that Bevin was hovering in the shadows again. Yet again, Wyldon's former squire was interfering in the present, and, not for the first time, Owen pondered how much different his relationship with his knightmaster might have been if Bevin had never existed. At any rate, Owen was willing to bet that Lord Wyldon wouldn't have been so determined about having a healer approve of his participation in the battle if Bevin's minor injury hadn't been transformed into a maiming during a skirmish.

Under other circumstances, Owen probably would have decided that he had no hope of overcoming Wyldon's ghosts, but right now, he couldn't do that. After all, Wyldon wasn't the only one who believed he had much to atone for; Owen himself was wrecked by guilt, and he was sure that playing a role in the upcoming offensive would be his only source of redemption.

"I have to participate in the battle, sir," he insisted, perfectly aware that he was trying his knightmaster's patience.

"No, Jesslaw, you have to learn to obey orders," glowered Wyldon. "You're lucky that I will blame your rebelliousness on the blow to the head and the blood loss that made you unconscious, instead of holding you accountable for your current behavior."

"Hold me accountable. Punish me for arguing with you however you want. Just please let me go," Owen burst out, throwing both caution and composure to the winds. "No matter what you think, my lord, I need to go. I feel responsible for those who were killed by the contaminated water and the poisoned oatmeal, because I didn't speak out about the misestimated distance from the well or about Walden stealing from the infirmary storage rooms. I have to do something to make up for all that death, or else I'll go mad."

To his shame, by the conclusion of this outburst, Owen's voice was little more than a strangled cry knotted in his throat. Worse still, even though his stoic knightmaster was about the last person he wanted to see him weeping, before he could figure out what was transpiring, tears were flowing down his cheeks. Once he realized what was happening, he swiped the tears away angrily and tried to bully his eyes into holding back the water they wanted to release. However, once the floodgates in his eyeballs had opened, they refused to close, and, in the end, Owen just let the tears stream down his face. He didn't even bother wiping them away, since he knew that they would be replaced by more, and there was no point in trying to conceal his sobbing from his sharp-eyed knightmaster anymore. There was no reason to pretend to be dignified when your eyes had been transformed into pouring thunderclouds, after all.

Through the fog of tears obstructing his vision, Owen saw that his knightmaster sat, as though chiseled from ice, in his chair. In the past, he might have assumed that was a sign of fury, but now he suspected that it was a reflection of Wyldon's discomfiture at finding himself in an emotional realm. Probably, as was his typical response to Owen's sentimental excesses, Wyldon's initial impulse was to growl at him to stop blubbering immediately. Obviously, though, something was preventing him from doing so. Possibly he was afraid that another harsh word might make Owen cry even harder.

Owen didn't know whether he would cry harder if Wyldon barked at him, and he wasn't even aware of whether he was capable of crying any harder than he was. In fact, he didn't know anything at the moment. He didn't understand fully why he was weeping, for he couldn't say whether his tears were for the man he had thought Walden had been, for the man Walden had actually been, for himself and what he had been forced to do, or for the whole world and the mess it was in. Certainly, he didn't have a clue whether he wanted Wyldon to attempt to comfort him or to just act like he didn't notice Owen's bawling.

"Hush, Owen." As he finally unfroze and began drying Owen's face with his own handkerchief, Lord Wyldon's voice somehow rendered his instruction both a command and a consolation. "I shouldn't have allowed our disagreement to go on this long when you are so exhausted, and I shouldn't have snapped at you in your condition. When you need rest to recover, you shouldn't become distressed. Now, I promise you that I'm not angry with you, if that's what has upset you."

"You should be angry at me, sir." Dully, Owen shook his head, his tears continuing to fall, albeit at a slower pace. "Mithros knows, I'm not a proper squire. Even now, I can't obey orders, and, even when I'm sick, I can't stop arguing with you. And I was the first one to tell Walden about the offensive we were planning against the Scanrans, and although I gave him no more details other than when it was going to take place, I shouldn't have even told him that much, and I shouldn't have been eavesdropping on you and General Vanget in the first place."

"I trust that you have learned to be more careful at least about sharing confidential information you glean from eavesdropping on me," Wyldon commented dryly. "Now, I'm not going to put up with this self-pity act of yours any longer, so you can cease that fool crying of yours."

"I thought you just said that you shouldn't scold me in my condition, my lord." With a final sniffle, Owen managed to stop sobbing.

He expected some reprimand for his insolence, but instead one side of Wyldon's mouth twisted upward in what might have been amusement, and he offered a terse nod of approval. "Good. Give me an argument."

"Sir?" Owen stammered, positive that his ears must have been wounded in his fight with Walden. After all, that was far more likely than that Wyldon, who always lectured him for arguing, would encourage him to do so.

"Give me an argument," repeated Wyldon crisply, although Owen thought he could detect the barest trace of amusement at his squire's shock. Thinking sourly that he loved nothing more than being someone else's chuckle fodder, Owen listened, still not entirely sure that his ears weren't playing a vicious practical joke upon him, as his knightmaster went on, "I'd rather have you sass me than whimper about how ashamed you are. You have spirit, Owen, and that's something that I've always admired about you."

"You have, my lord?" Owen asked, tilting his head doubtfully. It was spirit that made him argue with Wyldon, view rules as ought-to suggestions, treat some orders as optional, and behave impulsively. In short, just about all the qualities that Wyldon most seemed to disapprove of were attributable to his spirit. That was why, even though he knew that Wyldon cared about him, he sometimes wondered if his knightmaster would have been more content with a less spirited squire.

"With people, as with horses and dogs, spirit can compensate for a lot." Wyldon shrugged. "You'd be surprised how often it isn't the smartest or strongest person or animal that wins, but the most spirited. Now, you should rest again if you want the healers to declare you fit for fighting and riding. Do you hear me?"

"Yes, sir." Owen had heard everything Lord Wyldon had just said, and it was just about everything he ever wanted to hear—just about everything he needed to hear.


	44. Chapter 44

Lost and Won

All too soon, light penetrated Owen's bizarre but not unpleasant dream about flying on a dragon's back with Margarry. Reluctantly, he opened his eyes, surrendering to the light as always, and saw that the rising sun was streaming into his sickroom from the window.

Wishing for what must have been the ten thousandth time in his life that the sun wasn't such a cursedly inconsiderate early riser, he decided that if he was awake, he might as well spend his time doing something productive. He sat up in his bed, and began to prepare himself for the healer's inspection that would determine whether he was permitted to participate in tomorrow's showdown.

When he sat up, he was appalled to discover that it required much more effort to do so than it typically did, since an invisible boulder seemed to have been affixed to his spine overnight. Telling himself that he was imagining things, he forced himself to touch his toes, ignoring the voices from throughout his body that screamed he was tearing himself apart as he did so.

Stars swam in his mind, but Owen overcame the pain enough to perform his morning stretches. He was about to bully himself into climbing out of bed to do sit-ups and push-ups when the door swung open. As senior healer Nedley strode in, Owen reminded himself that it was unwise to needlessly offend someone who was about to pass judgment on his ability to fight tomorrow, and stifled a snide remark about the man's substandard knocking abilities.

Before Owen could figure out what exactly was happening to him, he found himself shoved back against his pillows. Then, Nedley was examining the cuts on his body with much frowning and muttering. When he had finished studying Owen's wounds, Nedley ordered, "Let me see you sit up."

Trying to sit up faster than he had previously, Owen lurched forward, and, in the process, felt as though his spine had splintered into a million pieces. He couldn't suppress the resultant gasp.

"You can't even sit up without straining yourself." Nedley emitted the cluck of disapproval that was common among all healers. "I don't see any point in even asking you to stand and stretch for me. It's obvious that the only fight you'll be engaged in for awhile will be with the scrapes all over your body."

"I was stretching before you came in," protested Owen. "I know I can stand, too, if I try hard enough."

"If you have to struggle to stand up, how will you ever manage to swing a sword around?" Nedley demanded, arching an eyebrow. "I admire your determination, but in this case, I would advise that you channel it into measures that will facilitate rather than impede your recovery."

"My injuries are minor," Owen pointed out, remembering what Wyldon had told him last night. "You already healed the major ones."

"My boy, I've been a healer longer than you've been alive," observed Nedley testily. "Kindly refrain from telling me how to do my job."

"I'm not a boy." Owen bristled, because even Lord Wyldon wasn't allowed to call him a boy as if he were ten years old. "For your information, I'm only a few months away from taking my Ordeal. Maybe that doesn't make me a man, but that certainly makes me a young man, at least."

"I don't suppose that someone slipped you herbs to make you more argumentative," sighed Nedley.

"I don't want to tell you how to do your job," Owen responded, perfectly aware that he was being insolent, petty, and spiteful, but not particularly caring at the moment. This morning, Nedley was rubbing against him in all the wrong ways, and, if he had already failed his inspection, he figured that he should vent at least some of the helpless fury now deluging him upon the stupid healer who was coming between him and his redemption.

"Well, rest assured, young man, that my report to Lord Wyldon will reflect the fact that you are unable to ride this afternoon, and that you are definitely incapable of fighting tomorrow. On a whole, I suspect that my report will only confirm conclusions that he has already reached." Nedley's lips thinned. "If I were you, I would resign myself to remaining here."

With that, Nedley swept out of the room, leaving a seething Owen behind. Nedley and Lord Wyldon were both crazy if they expected him to just rest on his cot while men he knew fought and died in an important battle against the Scanrans. They were insane if they imagined that, after all his mistakes with Walden, he was going to do nothing to atone for what he had done.

"I'm not remaining here," Owen hissed, clenching and unclenching his hands, and ignoring the whimpers from the slices spanning each palm.

The words startled him, especially since he did not make a habit of talking to himself aloud. Yet, suddenly, without having to think about it, he knew they were true. Before he had been aware of it, he had arrived at his decision. No matter what Nedley recommended and Wyldon commanded on the contrary, Owen would participate in the battle. He didn't have a clue how exactly he would execute such a feat, but he was confident that he would be able to achieve the maneuver. After all, where there was a will, there was a way, and if there was one thing that Owen possessed in abundance, it was willpower. Even Wyldon said so, and determination was the hallmark of Owen's knightmaster.

As he considered Lord Wyldon at any length for the first time since he resolved to enter the battle against the Scanrans in defiance of his orders, Owen bit his lip. Not being a complete moron, he knew that Wyldon would be irate when he discovered what Owen had done. If he had learned nothing else from training with Wyldon for all these years, he had learned that the man did not tolerate disobedience, impulsiveness, and foolish decisions. No doubt Wyldon would classify the behavior Owen was planning as all three, which meant that the lecture might last well into the next century.

However, it wasn't envisioning Wyldon's anger that caused his stomach to knot. No, it was picturing Wyldon's disappointment, and there was no question that Wyldon would be disappointed. After all, just last night, he had informed Owen in no unclear terms that he would be very displeased if Owen refused to follow the healers' instructions to remain here and rest. Wyldon's disapproval would pierce him like a blade to the heart, but Owen was willing to absorb the blow of it, because he was sure that, no matter what his knightmaster believed, he was acting correctly.

At the end of the day, however important Wyldon's opinion was to him, he had to live with himself, and he knew that he would not sleep at nights or be able to meet his eyes in the morning washing water if he didn't force the Scanrans to retreat across the Vassa tomorrow. Besides, he attempted to console himself, if Wyldon's approval could be lost, it could also be earned; if Wyldon's trust could be lost by Owen's disobedience then it could also be won again.

Paying no mind to the nasty voice inside his head that pointed out that Bevin had never regained Wyldon's approval or his trust, Owen clambered out of bed. After waiting for Tortall, which suddenly seemed to have flown into the sky, to return to the ground again, he started doing push-ups, plotting how he would escape with practically everyone else in the fort this afternoon.

Shortly after noon, when most of the healers were eating lunch in the mess, and the healers that remained were preoccupied with tending to the few other patients in the ward, Owen crept out of his sickroom. As quietly as he could, he exited the infirmary.

Once he had escaped from the infirmary, he acted as naturally as he could, so as to not attract undue attention to himself, as he headed back to his bedroom to pack. When he shut his own door behind him, he breathed a sigh of relief, knowing that, since he had already received his afternoon visit from a healer, his absence from the ward was unlikely to be detected until the evening or the next morning, by which time he would be long gone if all went well.

After he had gathered the weapons, clothing, and supplies he would need, there were still several hours until it was time for the men to depart for tomorrow's assault. Deciding to take advantage of the opportunity to restore his energy with a brief nap, Owen collapsed on his bed, and slept until the shifting quality of the sunlight falling into his bedchamber awakened him.

With a start, he realized that it was almost time to leave, and, after putting on his weapons and armor in case they were attacked mid-march and throwing his satchel of clothing and supplies over his shoulder, he hurried to the stables as fast as the dizziness and agonizing movements brought on by his knife wounds would allow.

When he arrived at the stables, he was relieved to see that, as he had anticipated, the stalls were thronging with men saddling their mounts, and, in the din, nobody paid any attention to one lowly squire. As he approached Blaze's stall with what he hoped was the appropriate mixture of caution and casualness, Owen grinned when he saw that Heart wasn't in the stables. That meant that her master must be outside already, supervising the departure from there.

Once he had saddled Blaze, Owen deliberately lost himself in a knot of soldiers as he exited the stables. Then, he looked around the courtyard for Davis' squad.

"I'm going to fight with your squad," Owen announced to Davis, as he approached.

"Ye've been assigned to work with us?" asked Davis, looking at him with a dubiousness Owen didn't appreciate.

"Yes." Owen nodded, electing not to mention the minor detail that Owen himself had done the assigning. A large part of him revolted against the employment of such a deception, and he told himself that it was still possible for him to return to the healers' ward without any more dishonesty. Yet, he couldn't do that. He had to go forward. Killing lots of Scanrans to compensate for all the Tortallan blood he had allowed Walden to shed was more crucial than being completely honest.

"An interesting choice on Lord Wyldon's part," grunted Davis. "Knights are supposed to want their squires near them in battle. With ye injured, I'd think he'd want to keep ye near him all the more, assumin' ye were fit to fight anyway."

"I'm fit to fight," Owen declared, sticking out his chin, as more men continued to pour into the courtyard, dividing themselves up into squads and companies.

"I'm not questionin' ye," replied Davis. "I'm not questionin' Lord Wyldon, either, because I've been in the army long enough to know that arguin' with superiors leads to nothin' desirable."

Here, Owen thought with a spasm of guilt and grief, Seth would probably have made some arch statement to the effect that nobody could really question military intelligence since the military didn't have any to begin with, but now that Seth was in the Divine Realms, there was nobody to act as squad cynic.

Glancing at the faces of the rest of Davis' squad, Owen was confident that they were all imagining Seth expressing similar insubordinate sentiments. An awkward pause ensued as they all waited illogically for a man who had been permanently silenced by death to speak. Then, Lucian finally broke the quiet by saying in a tone of fake heartiness to Davis, "Cheer up, Sarge. We're two men short now, and Owen can make up for one man, even if he is still recovering from injuries."

Before anyone could respond, they were engulfed in the carefully regulated chaos of riding out of the fort in precise military lines. By the time they had left the stronghold behind, Davis was content to let the issue of Owen joining his squad in battle drop.

Owen was able to enjoy exchanging riddles with his companions for about a half hour before fatigue overtook him. Then, trying to block out the jolts of pain that Blaze's every step sent rippling through his body and ignoring the constellations that were twinkling in his head again, Owen couldn't listen to any more riddles, and certainly couldn't devise any of his own. Instead, he devoted himself to not swaying visibly on his horse, or, worse still, toppling off his stallion.

After all, if he fell off Blaze, not only were the odds good that he wouldn't have the wit to position himself properly for landing, meaning that he was likely to break his neck, but if he didn't, that would attract Wyldon's notice. That couldn't happen. If Wyldon saw him, he would be sent back, and he needed to take part in this battle, even if he felt as though he had just been whipped.

Finally, after what seemed like eons but must only have been a few hours, the army halted to camp for the evening. Wobbling like a drunkard hobbling out of a tavern, Owen stumbled off Blaze. Once he had tied Blaze to a tree and fed him some oats, Owen tried to assist Davis' squad in pitching a tent. However, after his scraped fingers dropped their third pole, Davis waved him away impatiently.

Too exhausted to be ashamed that he had been more of a hindrance than a help, he plopped on a mossy log. The instant he sat down, he mused that it would truly be magnificent if he could remain here forever. Yet, that wouldn't be acceptable, for he had a war to wage tomorrow at dawn…

"Ye look paler than me ma's whitest bedsheets." A familiar voice invaded the cloud Owen's mind had been transformed into, and he jumped as Lucian settled beside him on the rotting fallen tree. "Ye really aren't in any shape to be goin' into battle tomorrow, if ye ask me. That's the army, though. Just patch up a man enough so that he can be sent out to fight again and maybe this time to die."

"Don't worry, Lucian," Owen reassured him, accepting with a grateful nod the cold cheese and meat on weevil bread that was their supper since they couldn't afford to attract Scanran attention by lighting campfires. "It's nothing that a decent night's sleep won't cure."

Inwardly, Owen observed that he was getting into the despicable habit of lying to others practically every time he drew breath. Perhaps after this was all over, he wouldn't be able to meet his own eyes in the washwater, anyhow.

"Nobody ever gets a decent night's sleep in a tent," chuckled Lucian, spitting out a weevil. Sobering, he added, "Anyway, what's wrong with ye appears to require more than a night's rest to fix. Truly, I'm surprised the healers released you to fight."

"Healers are all crazy." Owen shrugged, immensely appreciative of the growing darkness that prevented Lucian from beholding the scarlet splotches on his face that formed because he was aware that an indirect falsehood was as reprehensible as a direct one. "It comes from drinking too much of their own potions."

"Maybe I shouldn't have any more of their disgusting medicines, then," muttered Lucian, munching thoughtfully on his meat and cheese on weevil bread.

After that, the two of them finished their meals in silence. When they were done, they unrolled their sleeping mats in the tent Davis' squad had erected. Within seconds of curling beneath his blanket and shutting his eyes, Owen was swallowed up by blackness and then enveloped in the warm embrace of a dream in which he and Margarry raced their steeds through a pastoral paradise.

This delightful dream was enough of a restorative that when Owen arose, he felt mildly rejuvenated, although, by the time he had devoured his serving of dried fruit and listened to Davis' pre-battle instructions, he was feeling as frail as the gray pre-dawn light. His armor seemed to weigh fifty pounds more than usual, and, when he mounted Blaze, his bones turned to milk.

As he rode out with Davis' squad, Owen wondered as the stars swam in his brain again if he should participate in this offensive after all. Maybe Nedley was right. Perhaps he really was too weak to do so.

You're only weak if you allow yourself to be, he snapped at himself, and you won't permit yourself to be weak. Besides, fleeing from the showdown at this point would be cowardly, and it's better to be dead than to be a chicken.

After that, there was no more time for second-guessing himself, for he and Davis' squad had just ambushed a group of Scanrans who had been waiting, thanks to the information Walden had furnished, to leap out at a group of Tortallans.

As Owen's sword clashed against the blade of a Scanran's, he was relieved to discover that the pain he was in waned when he was fighting. As usual, his body ignored the agony and focused on not only keeping him alive, but upon killing the enemy. Just like always, his world in battle largely consisted of his reflexive attacks and parries, and those of his opponents.

A surge of victory coursed through him when he beheaded his first Scanran of the day, and his satisfaction increased when his sword ripped through the intestines of another foe, so that the man's innards spilled from him like eels.

As the sun climbed higher in the sky, baking his back and shoulders, the sweat Owen was already producing from the exertion seemed to multiply tenfold. With some effort, he blocked out the rivers of sweat pouring down his spine. At the same time, he blinked rapidly to dislodge the stinging sweat that had trickled down his forehead into his eyes. Despite his attempts to ignore it, though, the burning sun drained Owen of his strength piece by piece. Soon Davis, Lucian, and the other members of Davis' squad had to intervene at more and more frequent intervals to defend him.

A flame of shame roared through Owen every time someone had to protect him, but at least, he comforted himself, he wasn't interfering with their success too much. After all, Davis' squad was pushing the Scanrans steadily down the rocky bank to the Vassa. Indeed, by the time the sun was descending behind the mountains, staining the earth and sky a crimson-orange, the Scanrans they were pursuing were forced to hop on a raft. As Scanrans retreated across the river, Owen and Davis' squad harassed them with arrows until they were out of shooting range.

With the sunlight swiftly fading, Davis led his men back to the Tortallan camp, where they learned that all along the bank, the Tortallans had routed the Scanrans, and that, as a result, there were now no Scanrans left on this side of the Vassa in this district. Even though his wounds were aching and he was feeling nauseous, Owen was about to join in the cheering and boasting around the campfire outside Davis' squad's tent when a voice hard enough to slice diamonds shouted, "Jesslaw!"

Owen's heart stopped beating and sank into his stomach like a stone. He would recognize that particular tone anywhere, although it was one he desired to hear nowhere, since it signified nothing less than imminent catastrophe. Steeling himself, he pivoted to face his pale with wrath knightmaster, who was standing a few feet behind him.

"My lord?" he asked, wishing that a hysterical fraction of him wasn't imagining these would be his last, pathetic words.

"Come with me." Lord Wyldon's manner was cold enough to make the blood in Owen's veins freeze. "There are a couple of issues I would like to discuss with you."

"Yes, sir." Although it was the last thing that they wanted to do, Owen persuaded his legs and feet to follow Lord Wyldon back to the man's tent. As he trailed dully behind his knightmaster, Owen felt as though he were walking to the gallows, and, abruptly, the solders trading stories of the day's triumph beside the fires that eerily illuminated their faces appeared to be leering spectators for his execution.

Like all walks to the gallows, Owen's journey to Lord Wyldon's tent was simultaneously too long― providing too much time for Owen to anguish over his fate― and too short― not staving off the sentence for long enough.

When the walk ended, and they entered Wyldon's tent, Owen shuddered when he saw how shadowed it was, since a darkened tent somehow seemed a distinctly ominous omen. Perhaps the blackness bothered Wyldon, as well, for he lit several candles on his make-do desk, explaining tersely, "I'd like to see your face when I talk to you. Now, explain to me how you came to be here when the healers declared you unfit for traveling and fighting, and I made it plain that you were to abide by their decision if they determined you weren't ready to go into battle today."

"It was only one healer, my lord," Owen pointed out, his mouth drier than parchment. He was taking refuge in irrelevancies. Dealing with anything larger would cause his splitting headache to worsen.

"One very competent senior healer who was perfectly qualified to make such an assessment," countered Wyldon, his eyes burning. "Now, give me a proper answer, Squire. I'm not in the mood to tolerate any more insolent stalling tactics from you."

'I just snuck out of the infirmary around noon when most of the healers were out eating, and those that weren't were busy with the few other patients," Owen responded. "Then I went to my bedroom to pack, sir. I waited until it was almost time to leave, when I went to the stables, which were so crowded that I could easily saddle Blaze without drawing attention. Once I'd done that, I just found Davis' squad and explained to Davis that I had been assigned to work with his squad in battle."

"You claimed that I had assigned you to work with him and his men?" demanded Wyldon, arching his eyebrows.

"No, sir." Owen shook his head. "I didn't say that you had assigned me to work with him; I just said that I had been assigned to work with him. I could have been the one who assigned myself to that duty. He just assumed that you had."

"That was an assumption that you encouraged him to make." Wyldon's tone was all ice. "If you are going to attempt to argue, Owen, that what you told Davis wasn't a lie since you technically didn't say anything that was strictly untrue, don't waste your breath. I can see on your face that you know indirect lies are as dishonorable as direct lies."

"I only lied because I had to, my lord," Owen mumbled, wishing that Wyldon couldn't read his expression as easily as Neal did books.

"No, you lied because you had the urge to defy my orders," corrected his knightmaster crisply. "You lied because you felt the need to sneak around behind my back like a common thief. Your behavior was a disgraceful violation of the trust that I placed in you, and I don't know how you can begin to justify it to yourself or me."

Swallowing hard, Owen wondered how Lord Wyldon could always devise the precise words required to chop him off at the knees. After a stifling quiet, Owen managed to choke out, "Sir, your opinion of me matters more to me than anyone's except Margarry's or Kel's, but my opinion of myself is more important. If I didn't fight today, I couldn't live with myself."

"Gods all bless, there are better ways of atoning for the role you think you played in the deaths of the people Walden murdered than getting yourself killed!"

"I didn't get myself killed, sir." Owen lifted his chin higher, and blocked out the dizziness that swamped him when he jerked his head.

"You were lucky not to." Wyldon dismissed this, and, remembering how Davis' squad had been compelled to protect him, Owen couldn't argue with this analysis. When his squire didn't protest, Wyldon pressed, "Don't you trust me, Owen?"

"Of course, my lord," replied Owen instantly, his forehead knitting at the unexpected inquiry.

"Then why don't you obey me?"

"I do sometimes."

"Sometimes isn't good enough, Squire," Wyldon educated him severely, and he ducked his head. "Beings in command must be able to rely on those beneath them to obey their orders, and not to pick which ones they will abide by. Following commands sometimes is about as useless as disobeying them all the time, although some commanders would argue that a constantly defiant person is easier to lead than a selectively compliant being, since at least the constantly disobedient one is consistent. That's why you'll see me follow orders from General Vanget or the king that I do not always agree with."

"But sometimes disobeying orders isn't wrong," insisted Owen. "If it were, sir, then everyone who joined Kel in Scanra except Dom's squad would be executed as traitors by now."

"Very rarely it is acceptable to disobey orders. I assure you that it is seldom wrong to obey an order, but it is almost always wrong to defy one." As he established as much, Lord Wyldon's eyes narrowed menacingly. "Generally, you should probably obey at least one hundred commands for every one you disobey."

Realizing that his complied to defied orders ratio was nowhere near that, Owen scowled, and promptly regretted it when Wyldon snapped, "Don't look at me like that. You should understand by now that following commands can be the difference between life and death not only for yourself but for those around you. Whenever you defy an order, you should keep in mind that the command you failed to obey might just have been the one intended to save your neck, as my order for you to remain in the healers' ward until you were properly recovered was."

"My neck is safe," Owen reminded him, neglecting to mention that it was Davis' squad that had kept it so.

"That's not the point," snarled Wyldon. "The point is that I don't want you dying because you are foolish enough to think all my orders are optional. The point is that I don't wish to bury you because you stubbornly refuse to trust my judgment."

"I trust your judgment, but I don't want to be coddled, my lord," Owen retorted, his temper flaring. "I can handle things just fine, and if you believe I can't that reflects worse on your training than it does on me."

"I don't coddle you," hissed Wyldon in a fashion that was more terrifying than a bellow. "Your impertinence has just earned you a week's latrine duty. Perhaps that will convince you that I don't coddle you."

Now that his mouth was running, Owen couldn't halt it, so he plowed on, "I think you were really selfish, my lord, to trap me in the infirmary while other people were fighting and dying, especially when I longed to do battle alongside them."

"You can serve an extra shift of guard duty for a week, as well, since you're so concerned with selflessness." Wyldon's eyes flashed, and Owen's stomach plummeted as his knightmaster went on, "I find it astonishing, Squire, that you have the audacity to chide me for selfishness when your motives for coming here were the epitome of selfishness."

"I wasn't being selfish when I came here, sir," argued Owen, blinking in shock at being accused of selfishness rather than recklessness or some other frequent failing of his. "I came here because of Seth and all the others Walden killed."

"No." Wyldon shook his head. "You came here because of your own guilt at their deaths. You came here in the hope of finding redemption―"

"I found redemption," cut in Owen. "Sir, when the battle was over, I did feel exhausted and I was in pain, but I also felt freed, as though Seth and everyone else who died thanks to Walden had released me from some obligation to them."

"Exactly. You were worried about your own catharsis and redemption. You weren't concerned with anyone else." Wyldon's voice cracked like a lash in Owen's brain. "Before you left, you didn't consider how your injuries would force your allies to compensate for them and shield you, compromising their ability to fight. Nor did you pause to reflect on your responsibilities to the Crown and to me."

"I thought I was supposed to fight to protect the Crown's interests." Bewildered, Owen frowned. "How can I do that better from a sickbed than in battle, my lord?"

"You are an asset of the Crown's," Wyldon clarified brusquely. "That means that, while heroism is certainly admirable, you shouldn't needlessly throw your life away in one battle when you could be useful in fifty more down the road. In the strictest sense, while you serve the Crown, you do not have the privilege of treating your person lightly. What you have, young man, is the obligation to ensure that it is ultimately being employed to benefit the Crown the most. Sometimes that allows for heroics, but often it does not. It would have been best in this case for you to focus on recovering so you could serve fully again soon."

"It's not fair for you to lecture me about that when everyone knows you don't go to the healers half as often as you should or listen to their advice if it doesn't suit you," scowled Owen.

The next second, before he could figure out what was transpiring, a white blur was whizzing toward his face. A crack resounded throughout the tent, and, for a surreal instant, Owen had no notion what had made the noise. Then, he realized that his cheek was flaming, his vision was tinted with rainbows, and the tent was whirling around him.

His mind had gone numb, and it took a minute to occur to him that Lord Wyldon had slapped him. Of course, he told himself, he had every reason to be taken aback. After all, nobody― not his father, nor any of the tutors and servants hired to care for him― had ever smacked him like that. Maybe that was why he was such a free spirit.

His initial impulse was to burst into tears and clutch his fiery cheek with his cool hands. However, something inside him rebelled against that. That mutinous spirit seized his tongue, and baldly lied, "That didn't hurt."

Somehow, even though the blaze in his cheek had to make it obvious he was in pain from Wyldon's slap, he didn't want to admit it aloud. He was too proud to confess that his knightmaster's slap had hurt him both on the inside and on the outside, and that the agony that had swelled in him when Wyldon had accidentally broken his ankle in a tilting lesson was nothing compared to this. After all, that had been a mistake; this had been intentional.

Once he had delivered his obstinate declaration, Owen anticipated another smack, but, instead, Wyldon just stared at his palm as though he had never seen it before. Then, he remarked frigidly, "Owen of Jesslaw, you may count yourself fortunate that I know that if my hand is still smarting, I must have hurt you far more than I did me no matter what you claim otherwise." Here, Wyldon ceased studying his palm. "Since your attitude this evening has been awfully insolent, I don't know if you understand just how foolish, how disrespectful, how dishonest, and how selfish your actions today were. All I know is that I have done my best to impart the seriousness of your behavior upon you."

Unsure of how to respond to this, Owen said nothing, since that appeared to be the safest route. After a moment, Wyldon waved a hand, which Owen now knew how it felt to have slapped across his face, and ordered, "Go to bed. You can sleep in here since there's more room than in Davis' tent."

Feeling as if he would have preferred to sleep in the tent Davis' squad shared, Owen unrolled his sleeping mat. Today's battle had sapped the physical strength out of him, and his argument with Wyldon along with everything that had happened during it had exhausted him emotionally. Yet, he couldn't fall asleep when Wyldon still had the candles lit to read reports at his makeshift desk.

Instead of going to sleep, Owen drew his knees up to his chest, wrapped his arms across them, and rested his head across his arms, folding up on himself in a posture that he hadn't adopted since shortly after his mother died. This was the position he had used back when he was little and had wanted to hide from the world, but he hadn't curled up in a ball like this once he had accepted that his mother really was gone, and that he had to face life head on rather than draw away from it. Mithros, he had thought he had outgrown this pose long ago, but it seemed that he hadn't. Even though he wasn't a little boy any more, there was still a part of him that didn't want to be brave and fight. That part of him welcomed the darkness between his arms and took comfort in hugging himself when nobody else was going to.

Owen had no idea how long he had been curled in on himself before he heard Wyldon rise from his desk. He assumed that his knightmaster was preparing for bed, and so he was astonished when he heard Wyldon approaching his sleeping mat.

"I didn't know my squire could transfigure himself into a turtle." Lord Wyldon's hands clasped his shoulders, and, for the first time, Owen stiffened in his grasp. For the first time, he wanted to pull away from his knightmaster's touch. Yet, at the same time, he craved Wyldon's affection more than ever. He was insane, there was no denying it, and maybe that was what not having a real father did to a person. At any rate, all he could do now was compromise between that part of him that wanted to be comforted and the part of him that wished to be ignored forever by turning himself into an ice sculpture. "It's safe for you to emerge from your shell now. I promise that I won't hit you again."

"Does that mean that you forgive me, sir?" Owen asked, lifting his head to look up at his knightmaster, but keeping his arms and legs in position in case he needed to make a hasty retreat.

"Owen, what you did was impulsive, disobedient, foolish, and ill-informed," answered Wyldon. "However, I've forgiven you for acting like that in the past, and I probably will continue to do so in the future."

"I lied, too," Owen muttered, shaking his head. "I shouldn't have done that, since I know it's never right to lie. I guess you had a good reason to slap me, my lord, because I knew you would be angry when I did what I did, and I did it anyway."

"No, I didn't have a good reason to hit you," Wyldon informed him heavily. "That's what I wanted to talk to you about."

"Oh." As lame as it sounded, that was the only response that Owen could devise.

"I'm sorry for slapping you, Owen." Wyldon's tone was as stiff as it always was when he was apologizing. "I should not have done that. Since I wouldn't want anyone laying a hand on my children like that, I shouldn't have hit someone else's child."

"My father won't care that you slapped me, sir." Owen shrugged. "If anything, he'd probably be happy that somebody was attempting to discipline me, since he never wished to trouble himself with that."

"That's not really the point." Wyldon sighed and shook his head. "The point is that I promised myself that I would never strike a squire of mine. Breaking a promise to yourself is as bad as breaking one you made to someone else."

"You promised yourself that you would never strike a squire of yours?" repeated Owen, puzzled. That seemed like a rather random pledge to make to yourself. Before Wyldon could answer, he asked, "Why?"

Under other circumstances, he would not have dared to pose such a question, but Wyldon appeared to be in an oddly tolerant mood right now, so he thought he might get an answer. He did. It just wasn't the one he had anticipated.

"Have you ever heard of Laurent of Hershelfield, Squire?"

"Of course, my lord." Owen nodded, wondering if Wyldon was trying to change the subject. "He and Emry of Haryse are two of the most famous commanders from King Roald's reign."

"He was my knightmaster," said Lord Wyldon, and Owen stared. Although admittedly he had never contemplated who might have been Wyldon's knightmaster, he never would have imagined that it was Laurent of Hershelfield. It was rather astonishing that this fact had never been brought up before now, but, then again, Wyldon tended to keep his own counsel, and the late Laurent of Hershelfield hadn't written books about his campaigns like Emry of Haryse had. "He was the man who taught me the rudiments of command, how to train horses, how to breed dogs, and many other important things. For that, I owe him a tremendous debt, for I would not be the knight I am today without him. However, I never had the impression that he particularly wanted a squire. At any rate, he didn't take another squire before or after training me, and I suspect that the only reason he took me on at all was because he perceived it as his duty to pass on his knowledge to one member of the future generation. To this day, I still have no notion why he selected me as his squire, but I do know that we were horribly mismatched."

As he listened to his knightmaster speak, Owen was surprised to learn that Wyldon had also feared being unwanted as a squire, and had wondered why he had even been picked in the first place. His shock level was only elevated when Wyldon went on, "It will probably alarm you to hear this, Owen, but in many ways I was an improper squire. I had an independent streak a league wide that prevented me from obeying orders as often as I should have, I argued with my knightmaster far more than I should have, and I offered unsolicited sarcastic remarks more frequently than I ought to have. Any other young man would probably have been afraid to defy or debate with a hardened commander accustomed to respect and instant compliance from his troops, but I wasn't, or at least I wasn't scared enough to control my more rebellious tendencies. Since I refused to control myself, my knightmaster had no choice but to discipline me."

"You mean he slapped you regularly, sir?" With a sickening feeling, Owen realized that he thought he understood where Wyldon's story was headed and why Wyldon had sworn to himself that he would never hit a squire of his.

"More like switched, but, yes," replied Wyldon dryly.

"That's not fair!" Owen exclaimed heatedly. Being slapped once was bad enough, but at least you could tell yourself that you deserved the blow. When it was a regular occurrence, you couldn't make that argument. Nobody deserved to be hit all the time, especially not with a switch. "That's just wrong!"

"Switching was a far more common practice when I was a squire than it is now. For better or for worse, customs change over time, Owen, and it's not necessarily fair to judge yesterday's people by today's standards." Wyldon shrugged, and then stated bluntly, "Still, I will not conceal from you that the tradition of hitting your squire isn't one I mind dying out."

"Me neither," agreed Owen. His cheek was still hurting, after all, although he had discovered that if he mumbled out of one side of his mouth, it was less painful to speak.

"I won't pretend that I didn't hate being switched not just because it hurt, but because I was stubborn enough to act like it didn't, even though I knew that my knightmaster wouldn't stop hitting me until I was in tears. I won't pretend that I didn't eventually get into the habit of obeying him quickly and not arguing with him just to spare myself some pain. However, I won't pretend that I actually learned anything from being hit." His eyes distant, Wyldon shook his head. "I won't pretend that, even if I was forced to admit aloud that I was wrong to make a switching end, I still didn't think that I was right, and that the only reason I had been hit was because my knightmaster couldn't bear that. I won't pretend that I didn't resent my knightmaster for humiliating me like that. I won't pretend that I placed much trust in my knightmaster when a part of me was always alert for the next smack. I won't pretend that most of what I felt for my knightmaster wasn't fear rather than respect. I won't pretend that his hitting me didn't destroy our relationship, and that's why I swore to myself that I would never strike a squire of mine."

Here, Wyldon's eyes lost their faraway cast and pierced into Owen. "You've probably experienced similar frustrations as my squire. There have probably been plenty of occasions where you were convinced that I was being too hard on you, or that I had pulled rank just to end an argument because I didn't want to acknowledge that you were correct."

"I have felt that way sometimes," confirmed Owen, astonished that Wyldon was able to describe so accurately the overwhelming emotions that made him fight, not always successfully, the urge to shout. Lifting his chin defiantly, he added, "But I don't resent you, my lord, and I don't believe that I ever could after all you've done for me. Yes, you still scare me more than anyone else, but my respect for you far outweighs my fear of you. Anyway, I'm really less scared of your anger than I am of your disapproval, and that only matters to me since I respect you so much. As for trust, you're one of the people I trust most in the world."

"Even after I slapped you?" Wyldon's eyebrows arched. "In the realm of body language, rolling yourself up into a ball and stiffening in someone's grasp are not generally regarded as signs of trust, Owen."

"I stiffened, sir, but I didn't pull away," reasoned Owen. "Pulling away is rejection, and stiffening is hesitation."

"Hesitation isn't an indicator of mistrust?" Wyldon's eyebrows remained raised.

"It's an indication of temporary, but not permanent, distrust," explained Owen earnestly. "Maybe you lost some of my trust when you hit me today, but you regained it when you apologized and promised that you wouldn't do it again. I mean, it wouldn't be fair for me to ask you to forgive me and to trust me again if I wasn't willing to do the same for you, would it, my lord?"

"I suppose it wouldn't." Wyldon's hands closed around Owen's shoulders again, and this time Owen didn't stiffen. "It especially wouldn't because I know how hard it can be to be a squire, but you have no clue how difficult it can be to be a knightmaster. You don't understand how tempting it can be to focus on flaws in your squire that you want to hammer out, and neglect to praise all the good that you see. You don't comprehend how anger at your squire and pride with your squire can war with each other all too often. You don't realize how often the need to express that anger wins out over the desire to show that pride, because you don't want to encourage your squire's bad habits. You don't understand how infuriating it can be when your squire refuses to see just how wrong he is. You don't know how when you feel like you've tried everything else and your squire still refuses to see reason, you start thinking that maybe a slap across the face will teach him a lesson, and, even if it doesn't, at least you'll feel better."

The gist of this seemed to be that even though Wyldon could be overly critical, irritable, and absurdly bossy, he was honestly trying in his bumbling knightmaster way to help Owen grow. Owen was willing to accept that, but at the same time he felt oddly miffed.

"I'm sorry you find me so impossible to deal with, sir," he grumbled, "but you did bring these problems upon yourself. After all, you knew what kind of personality I had when you asked me to be your squire."

"I was familiar with your personality." Wyldon smiled crookedly. "That's why I asked you to be my squire in the first place."

"It was?" Owen eyed his knightmaster skeptically. Truly, he had no idea why Wyldon had chosen him for a squire. He tried not to let that fact bother him too much by reminding himself that it didn't really make a difference why he was selected. All that mattered was that he had been picked. After all, it was the relationship itself, not how it commenced, that was important. Still, there was a curious element in him that craved to know why he had been chosen when as a page he had been distinctly average, and the only reason he might be a better fighter than his yearmates now was because he would have to possess the brains of a mollusk to not benefit from regular one-on-one instruction with Wyldon. "Do you enjoy our clashes, my lord?"

"You would be well advised to watch your mouth, Squire, as your last two comments have strayed dangerously near impudent territory," warned Wyldon, but Owen thought he saw a glint in the man's brown eyes that suggested he was more amused than annoyed. "Besides, it's you who appears to relish our disagreements, since it is the squire who starts every argument by contradicting something his knightmaster says."

Before Owen could solidly enter impudent territory by responding that it was the knightmaster who said something worth contradicting in the first place, Wyldon remarked, "Anyway, you might be interested in knowing that I took you as my squire because you remind me of myself when I was younger."

"I do, sir?" stuttered Owen. Margarry might have claimed that he and Wyldon were alike, but he had been confident that his knightmaster would be insulted by such a comparison.

"To be honest, I never would have noticed it if a little sparrow hadn't suggested that I take you as my squire, but yes." Wyldon's lips quirked. "Of course, there are notable differences. You are extremely extroverted; I have always been introverted. You are obnoxiously optimistic, while I was born a pessimist. You can't speak without pouring out whatever is in your heart, whereas I have always been uncomfortable discussing my feelings. You trust emotions where I prefer to rely on logic. You are fire, and I am ice. However, if you travel past those obvious differences, you'll discover that we are cut from the same cloth. We have the same determination, the same need for truth, the same thirst for justice, the same courage, and the same spirit."

Gazing at his knightmaster, Owen was suddenly able to envision Wyldon as a younger man, and with that came the revelation that so many of the differences that he thought existed between him and Wyldon were a byproduct of Wyldon's years as a squire. Abruptly, it occurred to Owen that Wyldon had once been a free spirit, too, but then enough switchings had made him rigid. No doubt Wyldon's obsession with following the rules had been something that had been beaten into him. With a sinking sensation, Owen realized that Laurent of Hershelfield had succeeded in crushing so much of the spirit that must have once blazed in Wyldon. It wasn't a comfort to him that Wyldon's spirit flared up every once in awhile in his dry humor and in the perverse pleasure he seemed to derive from occasionally making decisions that astonished people.

"Once I recognized myself in you, I knew that I had to break you to bridle, because you had to learn to obey orders and control at least some of your impulsiveness," Wyldon continued. "Training people is like training horses, and when you are faced with a spirited horse, the tendency is to break it to bridle by whipping it into submission. If you do that, though, the horse will never trust you even if you have bullied it into obeying you, and you'll never know when it will decide to throw you. However, if you break the horse to bridle with the right combination of firmness and gentleness, it will obey you, and its spirit will make it the most loyal and bravest mount you could desire. Frankly, Owen, before today I was convinced that I had you broken to bridle, but now I have revised that assessment to almost broken to bridle."

"You want to break me to bridle gently, my lord," murmured Owen. He didn't make it a question, since he didn't have to. He knew that if Wyldon had decided to beat him into submission, he already would have been broken to bridle, and most of his spirit would have been strangled. This realization only made him respect his knightmaster more.

"Yes." Wyldon rubbed his bad arm. "I believe progressives melodramatically refer to what I'm trying to do with you as ending a vicious cycle of abuse, which, unfortunately, is harder to do than many of them might think. Of course, it might be easier if my father hadn't died when I was four, because then I might have some other father figure to imitate beside my knightmaster."

"There's something else we have in common, then, sir," observed Owen. "We've both got unresolved father issues."

"Well, you aren't likely to resolve your father issues tonight, since you are going to go to sleep now," Wyldon informed him. "You need your rest, although the instant we return to Fort Mastiff you will be reporting to the infirmary to recover properly, and you will not be leaving, young man, until the healers discharge you."

"I thought I was going to do a week of latrine duty and an extra guard shift, my lord," Owen pointed out. Normally, he would never have reminded his knightmaster of such a thing, but desperate times called for desperate measures, and he preferred even latrine duty to languishing in the sick ward all day. At least during latrine duty you got to walk about and do something.

"You are," answered Wyldon firmly. "You are just going to wait until the healers release you to do so."

"Sir, yesterday I proved that I could ride a horse, and today I was able to fight in a battle." Owen decided not to mention that he had been on the verge of toppling off his horse, and that throughout most of the battle, Davis' squad had needed to cover him, since he felt that weakened his stance. "Do I really need to spend any more time in the infirmary?"

"You have overexerted yourself, Owen," Wyldon educated him tersely. "People who overexert themselves while their bodies are recovering from injuries tend to do a great deal of damage to themselves, hence the reason you are going to the healers' ward as soon as we return to Fort Mastiff."

Sighing as he recognized that Wyldon had made up his mind and that there was no profit in arguing further, Owen lay back on his sleeping mat. He was about to close his eyes when a thought flitted across his mind, and he asked, "My lord?"

"Squire, if I have to drag you to the infirmary and tie you to a bed, I will, so you can stop wasting your breath arguing with me about this now." Wyldon shot him a sharp glance.

"My question wasn't about that, sir."

"Ask, then," commanded Wyldon, raising an eyebrow.

"Was the sparrow who suggested that you consider taking me as your squire Kel?" Owen wanted to know.

"It might have been." Wyldon shrugged noncommittally. "Then again, it might not have been."

"I was right." Smugly, Owen grinned. He had always found it odd that Kel had been delighted but not shocked when he told her that he had become Wyldon's squire, and the word choice sparrow from a man who valued precision of language had leaped out at him.

"I hate to dent your ego, Owen, but my answer wasn't an affirmative."

"It was an affirmative," yawned Owen. "It was an evasive reply, my lord, and evasive replies equal yes."

"They do not equal any such thing." Wyldon's tone was brisk. "You are talking nonsense, and you need your rest. Go to sleep now."

"I'm not talking nonsense, sir," persisted Owen through another yawn. "Kel knew I wanted to be a squire to a fighting knight, and she didn't just make it so that I was a squire to one—she ensured that I was squire to the one who could turn me into the best knight I could be."

"As I said, Squire, you are exhausted, and you are speaking nothing but nonsense." Although his words were gruff, Wyldon's face had softened. "Now, go to sleep. I don't want to have to repeat myself again."

Owen intended to protest that Wyldon only thought what he said was nonsense due to excessive modesty, but he made the mistake of closing his eyes. The second that he did so, darkness overcame him, the world around him faded, and soon sleep had swallowed him up entirely.


	45. Chapter 45

Recovery

"I'm so glad that you've finally deigned to return to the infirmary, Squire Owen." As far as Owen was concerned, Nedley's tone was far too caustic for anyone in the healing industry with the possible exception of Neal.

Already, he was regretting ever letting Lord Wyldon escort him to the sick ward, although, of course, he hadn't really had much of a choice. After all, if he hadn't accompanied Wyldon willingly, Wyldon probably would have made good on the threat to drag him into the infirmary. That would only have rendered this nightmare all the more terrible. Seriously, it had been humiliating enough to have to bear the smug, knowing glances of the healers they passed on the way back to his sickroom without the added embarrassment of being dragged past them.

"Perhaps this time we shall even have the honor of discharging you before you decide to leave," continued Nedley, as he stopped peering into Owen's eyes and started running his hand along his patient's forehead, instead.

Owen's mind might have trudged through the massive headache that was again dominating his brain and senses to form a moderately coherent retort if Nedley's fingers brushing over his forehead hadn't transformed his whole head into a bonfire.

"I assure you that you will," announced Wyldon from the doorway. His tone was cold enough that for a second Owen hoped that it would extinguish the flames devouring his head.

When it didn't, Owen yanked himself away from Nedley's clutch, and then fell back upon the wall for support against the dizziness that flooded him at the jerky movement.

"You're hurting me," he muttered and felt like kicking himself. He had wanted to sound fearsome, but he had only succeeded in sounding tired and broken. "You're not healing anything. You're just making everything worse."

"He can't heal you if you don't let him touch you," snapped Wyldon.

Owen thought that he would allow someone to touch his forehead when it felt like it was being ripped in nine different pieces the day all the Carthaki slaves were liberated. However, he was saved the necessity of establishing as much aloud when Nedley said, "Never mind that, my lord. I don't need to touch him right now. It's obvious that I'll have to give him a potion for that headache of his right away. From his eyes, I'll have to do something about his dizziness as well. You are feeling dizzy, too, aren't you?" He added the last bit almost as an afterthought, turning to Owen.

"A little bit," Owen admitted. In this case, a little bit happened to mean that he felt as though the room were spinning around him, and there were times when he wasn't exactly sure which planks represented the floor and which the ceiling.

"A little bit," Nedley echoed, shaking his head in a manner that suggested he was all too aware of Owen's understatement. Then, he removed a mug from the nightstand and thrust it at his patient. "Drink this. It will reduce your headache and dizziness enough that I'll be able to touch you at least."

Smelling the disgusting combination of herbs and seeing that the liquid was a hue reminiscent of something one would find in the latrines, Owen crossed his arms to indicate that he would not imbibe anything that increased his nausea by sight and smell alone.

"Jesslaw!" It was only his name, but in that particular voice from his knightmaster it would have been enough to convince him to leap off a cliff without a second thought. As he always did when Lord Wyldon's tone adopted that menacing quality that stated more clearly than words that Wyldon would tolerate nothing less than instantaneous compliance, Owen's body betrayed him by springing into action.

As his mind stared on in horror, his trembling hands accepted the mug from Nedley. Then, the survival instincts that wanted to appease his knightmaster won out over those that didn't wish him to poison himself by drinking something that resembled feces and smelled like a rotting rat.

Trying desperately to pretend that he couldn't feel the viscous substance crawl down his throat, Owen gulped down the medicine. As soon as it was all swallowed, he dumped the mug back onto the nightstand, as eager to be rid of it as though it were a poisonous viper.

While he returned the mug to the nightstand, he was astonished to discover that the revolting drink had at least been somewhat effective. Now, he didn't feel seasick every time he moved, and his head was only filled with a dull ache, instead of feeling as though a million mallets were pounding against it at all times.

Now that he had bullied his squire into taking the sickening medicine, Wyldon seemed to determine that he had done his duty here, for he declared, "I have other business to attend to now. Owen, you will treat every command Nedley gives you as though it came from me. Understand?"

Feeling that it would be stupid to agree to obey a healer who was probably daydreaming about disemboweling him at this point, Owen hesitated. When Wyldon's dark eyes pierced into him like a lance, he surrendered, offering a short, angry nod. "Yes, sir."

Satisfied, Wyldon pivoted and left, shutting the door behind him and leaving his squire to Nedley's ministrations.

Since he seemed to have done everything he could to lessen Owen's headache and dizziness, Nedley focused on other matters—specifically, the knife wounds all over Owen's body. As he flipped over his patient's hands and examined the scrapes lining each one, Nedley tutted, "If you had hesitated for a moment before chagrining into glamorous battle, it might have occurred to you that holding a reins and fighting would cause your cuts to widen again."

Owen didn't know how to respond to this comment. To be honest, when he had slipped out of the infirmary he hadn't really considered the fact that the activity involved in riding and fighting itself might set back his recovery. As foolish as it sounded, he had imagined that as long as he wasn't injured in battle his earlier wounds wouldn't worsen. Of course, when traveling and fighting had exhausted him, made his cuts feel as if knifes were plunging into them constantly, made his head a thundering drum, and made him feel dizzy, he had started questioning that assumption.

"Now I will have to waste time I could have spent with other patients patching you up so you are at the same point you were before you went off on your little quest." Nedley's scolding continued as he rested his palms against Owen's.

The next instant, the air was aglow with magic, and a cool river was flowing into Owen's veins. Then, as Owen stared, his cuts began sealing before his eyes. The peculiar pulling of the skin on his palms made him long to yank his hands away from Nedley's, but he prevented himself from doing so by reminding himself that Nedley had already poured twice as much life energy into him as he should have, and, therefore, that he should cooperate with Nedley even if he didn't want to.

"I'm sorry," he mumbled, as Nedley released his hands and started healing slices on his arms, instead. "I didn't plan on being such a trouble to you."

"So you don't reckon that we worry when one of our patients disappears into thin air?" snorted Nedley, while the chilly streams in Owen's veins caused him to struggle not to shiver.

"I wasn't aware that you were concerned with my welfare," Owen scowled. As he spoke, Nedley lifted his shirt without bothering to obtain his consent first and began healing the wounds on his chest. Soon, Owen realized that sealing cuts on his chest hurt more than doing the same on his palms and arms. A gasp of pain escaped from his lips, and he thought that he preferred being healed while he was unconscious. "It was my understanding that you hated me."

"Your understanding was very flawed, then," Nedley replied, not getting distracted from the task of fixing the slices on Owen's chest so that they were no worse than they had been when he had escaped from the infirmary. "Hatred is a very strong emotion that I reserve only for those who have done me a grievous personal injury or whose crimes against humanity as a whole are heinous. It's not a feeling I harbor for impulsive young men who launch themselves into a battle in a condition where they are far more likely to be killed than to kill the enemy."

"Well, if you don't hate me, you must at least dislike me," grumbled Owen, annoyed that his precision of language was being challenged again, although he was slightly mollified when Nedley stopped sealing his cuts, and the pain in his chest waned.

"I don't dislike you, either," countered Nedley briskly. "Yes, you are insolent and obstinate, but I would have disliked my own children since they could talk if I disliked every person who displayed those qualities. No, I have enough memories of you helping out around here and cheering up patients not to dislike you, even though you are one of the most difficult patients I've dealt with in awhile."

"I see," Owen said, although he wasn't sure he did.

"I have a question for you, though, Squire Owen." Nedley arched an eyebrow. "When you've spent hours in here wrapping bandages and distributing medicine, what made you believe that you were above receiving help yourself?"

"I don't know." Suddenly, Owen found that his fingers were fiddling with the quilt beneath him. "I guess I just prefer assisting others to being aided by them. Anyway, I can't stand lying around like a cat in the sun while other people are out fighting and dying. I have to be doing something, or else I'll go insane."

"Well, the sooner you cease setting your willpower against mine, the quicker you'll be released from here," Nedley informed him. "When you work with me instead of against me, you'll recover much faster. Believe it or not, I derive more pleasure from discharging patients than keeping them cooped up in here."

"I won't resist you anymore," Owen promised.

"Good." Nedley offered a crisp nod of approval. "You can turn over a new leaf now by getting under your blanket and resting."

Without waiting to see if Owen followed his order or not, Nedley departed. As the door closed behind the healer, Owen slipped under the blanket and tried to sleep.

Yet, he could not do so. Finally, it had hit him just how appalling his behavior yesterday and the day before had been. Now, he recognized that not only had he made life difficult for Davis' squad by forcing them to protect him in the fray, but he had also complicated things for Nedley by compelling the man to heal him twice. Abruptly, he understood how selfish he had been not to consider the impact his actions would have on all these beings when he decided that he had to enter battle to find redemption.

Oh, and what a pathetic excuse that seemed right now. Sure, he had discovered his redemption, but now he comprehended that he could have atoned for his blindness in the Walden affair in some other fashion—one that wouldn't have presented such excellent odds of being the death of him.

It was so strange to think that, even during Wyldon's lecture, he hadn't truly entertained the possibility of his own death, despite the fact that Wyldon had brought it up several times. Even then, there had been something inside him that was arrogant enough to believe that death was something that happened to other, less fortunate, individuals, and that death would not dare to rob him of life while he was so young and strong.

However, that was horse dung. Nobody was exempt from the suffering and the death that was the bitter inheritance of every human. Beings younger than Owen were slaughtered all the time, and if he ever forgot that, he could envision all the poor children that had been murdered to create Blayce's killing machines. Warriors stronger than Owen perished in battle often enough, and, if he ever forgot that, he could remember what had happened to Quinton and Lofren.

Yes, he could die, and, as such, he had the obligation not only to himself and to the Crown, but to his loved ones not to throw his life away as recklessly as though it were counterfeit currency. After all, he was well aware that if he died, Wyldon would feel guilty, Margarry's heart would be broken, his sisters would cry that he was no longer around to taunt and be teased by, and his friends would mourn him, shaking their heads over the rashness that had finally gotten him killed.

No, he could never again make such a crucial choice without pausing to consider the impact it would have on those closest to him, whom he would remember as silent figures at his shoulder at all times from now on. Love, not fear of punishment or disapproval, would prevent him from doing something so selfish and ill-advised in the future, because love was more potent than fear could ever be.

After that, he fell asleep. For hours, his body enjoyed resting upon an actual bed rather than a mat before he was awakened by the sound of his door creaking open. Instantly alert, his eyes flew open and absorbed that the sun must have set for the chamber was dark except for a man standing in the doorway holding a candlestick. Squinting at the halo cast by the flickering yellow candlelight, he could discern that the visitor was Lord Wyldon.

"It's a relief to discover that my squire hasn't taken it upon himself to escape from the infirmary again," remarked Wyldon dryly, setting down the candle on the nightstand, pulling a wooden chair beside the bed, and sitting on it. Then, before Owen could make any answer, he proffered a mug, which, judging by the foul odor, contained more of the medicine that Nedley had thrust upon him earlier. "I promised that I would give this to you. Drink."

"I'm supposed to drink more of that ghastly stuff, my lord?" Owen eyed the mug in his knightmaster's hands warily, as though confident it were about to murder him.

"Yes, Squire, because this ghastly stuff will keep your headache and dizziness at bay, so your body can devote all its energy to mending your scrapes," Wyldon educated him brusquely. "Now, drink it, and don't make a scene."

Remembering his promise not to resist Nedley, and figuring that, by extension, his word applied here, as well, Owen sighed and took the cup. Then, before he had the opportunity to second-guess himself, he gulped down the horrid remedy so swiftly that he ended up giving himself a coughing fit.

"Sir, yesterday you said that you didn't know if I comprehended the seriousness of what I did when I snuck out of the infirmary to go into battle against the Scanrans," he commented awkwardly once his coughing spasm subsided.

"I did indeed." Wyldon's face was inscrutable, but, then again, Owen's gaze was blurred from the tears that had welled up in his eyes during his coughing fit, s he couldn't read much at the moment, especially not the subtle indicators of mood that he was sometimes able to detect in his knightmaster's dispassionate expression.

"I didn't understand at the time how wrong I was, but now I do," Owen went on, the syllables tumbling all over one another as they exploded from him in a torrent. "I shouldn't have disobeyed you when you were just looking out for my welfare. I should never have made Nedley heal me twice because I overexerted myself needlessly. I shouldn't have lied to Davis, and I never should have forced him and his men to constantly cover me. I shouldn't have risked my life so pointlessly. I shouldn't have called you selfish when I was the one who left the infirmary on an emotional whim without thinking of the trouble my actions would cause others. I'm sorry. I was wrong on every count, and I swear I won't do anything like that ever again."

"No, you won't ever do anything like that again," confirmed Wyldon, his eyes flashing dangerously. "You won't because if you do, I will see it as my duty to guarantee that you regret it for at least a decade."

After he had delivered this warning, Wyldon's tone softened as he continued, "As for everything else, I am relieved to hear you say such things, because I wasn't certain I had gotten through to you at all last night." He paused, shaking his head, and then added, "Mithros, Owen, if you hadn't been so headstrong yesterday evening, you might have understood sooner and saved yourself a slap in the face."

"I know, sir." Miserably, Owen bit the inside of his mouth until it bled and wished that, instead of having the frightful tendency of making everything more difficult for himself, he was in the habit of making life easier for himself. "It's just that whenever you start telling me how wrong I am, something inside me rebels and wants to prove that I'm right, even if a growing part of me is starting to believe that I'm wrong, after all."

"Squire, it's my responsibility to correct you when you are wrong," pointed out Wyldon, sighing and scratching the scars on his face.

"I know, my lord." That was all he could reply with. Truth be told, he was perfectly aware that his knightmaster's apparent needed to forever show or explain to him how he could have executed a maneuver more exactly, completed a task more thoroughly, or handled a situation better was really nothing more than a dedication to him and proof of Wyldon's desire to help him become the best knight he could be. At any rate, his mind understood this, but his heart still didn't relish being corrected by Lord Wyldon. Unfortunately, it was his heart, not his brain, that tended to lead him.

"Besides, don't you think that we already get into more disagreements than any six normal knightmaster and squire pairs without you arguing with me once you've realized that you are in the wrong?" Wyldon asked, a wry twist to his lips.

"That depends on whether Neal and the Lioness are one of those pairs, my lord." Owen's gray eyes gleamed mischievously, since this was one of those occasions when it was undeniably simpler to be playful than somber.

"Don't be impudent. Anyhow, they are not a normal pair. At first, I didn't know which one of them to feel sorry for, but I have since decided that I should sympathize with neither one, as they are Mithros' punishment on each other for their sins." Wyldon's nostrils flared as they always did at the mention of Lady Alanna with whom he shared a relationship that was approximately as warm as a glacier.

"Are we Mithros' punishment on each other, sir?" Owen wanted to know, all innocence. Although Wyldon had told him not be impudent, there had been a spark in his eyes that revealed he was more amused than irritated, which meant that it was safe for Owen to push him just a little further.

"That remains to be seen, and I have a distinct recollection, by the way, of warning you not to be impertinent," Wyldon responded crisply. For a moment, he was quiet, studying Owen, and then he resumed, "Now to return to business, I assure you, Owen, that I will respect you more for being reasonable and admitting you were wrong than for being pigheaded and continuing to argue even though you know you are in the wrong. Sometimes it requires more courage to apologize than to argue."

"Yes, sir," Owen murmured, staring down at his quilt. As his cheeks burned, his fingers tugged at the blanket threads.

"Stop that," ordered Wyldon, resting a stilling hand atop Owen's. "If you don't, you'll soon be without a blanket."

When Owen's fingers halted their yanking at the threads, Wyldon's hand drifted up to his chin and gingerly tilted his head upward. "Look at me, not the quilt. You're having a conversation with me, not the blanket."

"Yes, my lord." As Wyldon removed his hand from beneath his chin, Owen kept his eyes fixed on the older man.

"Now, I have something else to give you."

"It's not more medicine, is it, sir?" asked Owen dubiously.

"No, it's not more medicine," Wyldon assured him, his lips quirking.

"What a relief." Owen sagged against his pillows. "One cup of that potion you just gave me was enough to make me seriously consider suicide."

"Suicide isn't a joking matter," chided Wyldon, his tone as sharp as a honed blade.

"I beg your pardon, my lord," Owen muttered, fighting the urge to duck his head, since that would probably garner him another reprimand.

"Before I give you what I'm planning, I want you to understand that I'm not in any capacity rewarding you for your behavior yesterday or the day before." Wyldon's eyes locked on his. "There was nothing admirable about your actions, Owen, and you probably deserved to be punished more severely than I disciplined you."

"Yes, sir." Owen's forehead furrowed in bemusement. He couldn't follow what his knightmaster was saying at all. On one hand, it sounded ominously like Wyldon was going to add something else to his punishment, but that opening bit about rewarding made that seem unlikely.

"However, I have decided that you would be much less inclined to attempt to sneak out of here again if you have something to occupy your time." As he established as much, Wyldon pinched the bridge of his nose. "Besides, what I'm planning to give you isn't exactly a reward, since it is educational. If everything that was intended to increase knowledge were classified as a reward, then every punishment would be one, because every punishment is supposed to teach a lesson of some sort."

"My lord, I don't follow you at all," burst out a frustrated and frowning Owen.

"I mean, Squire, that I have a book on ancient Thanic military campaigns to give you," explained Wyldon, dropping a tome into Owen's lap as he spoke. "I've read it so many times that I could never muster the interest to do so again, so you need never trouble yourself with returning it to me."

However, Owen was only half listening as he stroked the cover of the book Wyldon had just given to him. Even though the book was certainly not new, it was still in pristine condition, because, as a rule, Wyldon liked to keep his possessions immaculate. Once he was done admiring the cover, Owen turned to the first page of the book, which was a vividly colored map of the ancient Thanic Empire, which had once spanned all of the Eastern Lands.

"Thank you, sir," he whispered, staring down at the map of the Thanic Empire and experiencing a discomfited sensation when he saw visual proof that Tortall, a country that he had always perceived as being as eternal as the gods, hadn't really existed in the days of the Thanic Empire. Yes, he had known that intellectually, but it had never been shoved under his incredulous nose before. "The book is wonderful."

"You're welcome, but bear in mind that it is not a reward," Wyldon reminded him sternly. "I will never approve of your acts of impulsive disobedience, nonetheless of yesterday's lying and selfishness."

"I understand, my lord." Owen acknowledged the comment, but couldn't prevent the eagerness from infusing his tone, as he inquired, "Is it true that the Thanic soldiers used to wear sandals, skirts, and helmets with brushes on them into war?"

"Only you would ask such a question, Owen." Sighing, Wyldon shook his head in despair. "Yes, that was the uniform that the Thanic soldiers wore into battle."

The mental image of anyone marching into battle thus attired made Owen chuckle. "Well, I suppose I can't expect much from people whose officials thought they looked sophisticated wearing bedsheets with purple stripes on them, sir," he choked out through gales of laughter.

"The Thanic soldiers defeated our ancestors, even though the appearance of our ancestors was far more menacing," Wyldon told him. He didn't need to mention the baths, and the ruins of buildings, roads, bridges and aqueducts that the Thanic people had left behind. Nor did he need to mention the fact that when the Thanic soldiers conquered what was now Tortall, the native languages of the diverse tribes had died out in favor of the tongue of the Thanic government, which was now known throughout the Eastern Lands as Common.

"The Thanic soldeiers only were victorious, my lord, because when they invaded in their skirts and sandals, our ancestors fell to the ground laughing, and, while they were doing that, the Thanic soldiers stabbed them with spears," countered Owen, shrugging.

To his surprise, Wyldon actually chuckled at this. Gawking at his knightmaster, Owen tried to remember if he had ever made the man laugh before and concluded that he hadn't. So far, he had never received more than a crooked smile, a brief grin, a wry twitch of the lips, or a glint of humor in the man's hard eyes in response to anything he said.

Once he had recovered from his shock enough to breathe again, Owen beamed. For some reason, he felt very special now that he had made Wyldon chuckle. Few people in Tortall could claim that they were able to accomplish that feat, after all.

All too soon, Owen's smile faded and Wyldon's laughter died. In the sudden silence that ensued, Owen found himself pondering why his knightmaster had given him a gift when his recent behavior had been so disgraceful. He had no clue why until he remembered some of his yearmates' stories about their parents giving them treats after spankings, and then everything fell into place in the jigsaw puzzle.

"Sir, did you give me this book because you felt guilty about hitting me?" he asked bluntly, cocking his head suspiciously.

"You have a great deal of nerve, Squire, posing such a question," glowered Wyldon. "Haven't I taught you by now that when anything that might be constituted as a present is bestowed upon you it makes you appear ungrateful and ill-mannered to ask why it was given?"

"I didn't mean to be rude or ungrateful, my lord." Upset that the camaraderie that had sprung up between him and his knightmaster had been shattered in favor of another lecture, Owen lowered his head. For a second, he bit his lip, and then words plunged out of his mouth before he could stop them. "I only asked because I was going to tell you that you didn't have to feel guilty. I was just going to say that I understand why you hit me, and I don't blame you for doing it. If one slap can prevent me from rashly risking my life in the future, then it can't really be bad, can it?" When Wyldon didn't reply, he mumbled, "Never mind. As usual, I said too much when I shouldn't have spoken at all."

Quiet permeated the room for a moment longer. Then, Owen felt Wyldon's hand clasp his shoulders gently.

"Please look at me, Owen." His knightmaster's soft tone provided him with the courage to glance up into Wyldon's eyes, which were filled with a rare tenderness. "It's generous of you not to fault me for hitting you, and I might even have agreed with you if I didn't know what was going on inside me when I slapped you. Perhaps I could justify striking you if I could honestly state that I hit you once in the hope that it would save your skin in the future, but I can't do that. The truth is that I wasn't thinking about what was best for you at all. Indeed, I don't even believe I was thinking at all—I was just trying to relieve my fury with you. After all, if I had been thinking I at least would've had the presence of mind to remember not to slap you with full-force when you were injured, and a milder blow would have hurt you enough to make my point. It was wrong of me to strike you just to release my own anger, and when I recall how you cringed from Nedley's fingers touching your forehead today, I know you were in no condition to absorb a full-fledged blow from me."

"I had survived being knocked around in a battle just fine, and your slap wasn't unbearably painful," protested Owen, sticking out his chin, and not mentioning that Wyldon's blow had felt unbearable at the time. "Anyway, it doesn't matter too much that you hit me since I know that you still care about me."

"Yes, I care about you. Never doubt that." As he squeezed Owen's shoulder again, Wyldon's voice had gone strangely hoarse. "Mithros knows that if I didn't care about you, I probably never would have slapped you in the first place."

"I thought you just said, sir, that you weren't thinking about my wellbeing at all when you hit me?" Owen demanded, convinced that bewilderment didn't even begin to describe what he was experiencing at the moment.

"I wasn't," agreed Wyldon grimly. "However, you must understand that if anyone else had escaped from the sick ward to fight in a battle, I would have been angry at them, but I only became so furious at you because you personally mean much to me, and I didn't want to see you die. When you were so unrepentant and insolent, it was all too easy for me to surrender to my wrath and strike you."

Here, Wyldon cleared his throat before concluding, "Squire, I accept that I could lose you in battle at any time, but I can't tolerate the notion of having you die through your own stupidity. You are young, and you have so much ahead of you. I don't wish to see you throw it all away carelessly. I want you to have the opportunity to fall in love, get married, and raise hellions like yourself."

"I've already fallen in love, my lord," Owen announced before he remembered that he was confessing to being in love with his knightmaster's daughter, and that Wyldon might not approve of such a declaration.

"Humph," grunted Wyldon, rubbing his bad arm. "At your age, Owen, young men are forever claiming at breakfast that they have fallen in love with a girl only to discover at supper that not only have they fallen out of love, but they can't even remember the name of the girl they were so enamored with."

"If they fall out of love, sir, then they can't have ever really fallen in love at all," Owen argued. "Love is everlasting. You can't fall out of it."

"I should have known you would be a hopeless romantic."

"You aren't, my lord?" Owen inquired, astonished, since he was certain that nothing less than pure love existed between Lord Wyldon and his wife.

"Absolutely not." Wyldon's lips thinned as though he deemed the question absurd. "I believe that a very select group of people who are willing to work at a relationship are rewarded with the sort of love that lasts forever. Most beings, though, are too lazy to bother with the duties and the respect that comes with true love, and, instead, equate love with passion. Such people flit like flies from one affair to the next, declaring each time that they have fallen in love, and really discovering later on that they have only given into their lust. Then, of course, there are some people who utterly lack the capacity to feel any sort of affection or attachment to anyone at all."

"My lord, you're just repeating what I said," Owen pointed out. "Just like me, you're saying that it isn't love unless you make it last forever. Otherwise, it's just lust or a silly infatuation."

"I guess that makes me as much of a hopeless romantic as you are." As he rose and headed toward the door, carrying the candle with him, Wyldon smiled crookedly. "Good night, Squire. Sleep well, so you can recover quickly."

"Good night, sir," Owen answered, as Wyldon shut the door, leaving the room pitch black. As he closed his eyes, Owen thought that romantic love of the sort that he shared with Margarry wasn't the only type of everlasting love. After all, it seemed like a father's love was just as enduring, for Wyldon had assured him that he never needed to doubt that Wyldon cared about him, and, Owen realized with a start, the proof of that assertion was in the fact that Wyldon never stopped caring about Bevin. Even though Bevin had beaten his daughter, Wyldon hadn't wanted to humiliate his former squire by challenging him to a joust, despite all the calumnies Bevin said against Lord Wyldon.

It stood to reason, then, that since Owen would never do anything as unforgivable as Bevin had, he didn't have to worry about losing Wyldon's affection, after all. Now that he had earned his knightmaster's love, it was irrevocable. As this idea occurred to him for the first time, a powerful wave of serenity such as he had never experienced before washed over him. Always, he had believed that if he had Lord Wyldon's unconditional love that would make him complacent and undermine his productivity. Now, he saw it was the opposite; he would want to work twice as hard in an attempt to demonstrate just how much he appreciated that love.

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	46. Chapter 46

Distractions

"No," Wyldon barked, whipping Owen's sword aside with his own weapon. "Wrong! You're too slow on the transition. You're leaving your left side wide open for a rapid counter again."

It was mid-September, and the two of them were engaged in a practice duel on Cavall's training court, which they were in right now because Wyldon had decided that it would be prudent of them to leave the northern border before the snows came, and that departing from the Scanran border when all the adversaries in his district had been forced to the other side of the Vassa was as convenient a time to go as any. Rather, they were supposed to be engaged in a practice bout, but Owen's unruly mind was occupied with other matters—namely with Margarry and the odd coldness with which she had been treating him since he had arrived in Cavall with her father last night.

When he had first rode in, she had greeted him with a frosty formality. At meals, she didn't thaw and only exchanged words with him if etiquette required it. Twice he had tried to speak to her privately, and she had rebuffed him on both occasions. If they passed in the corridors, she swept by him in a rustle of her dress. Where she usually shot him keen, wry, or flirtatious glances, now she glared at him with eyes that were as hard as Lord Wyldon's at the height of his fury. Every time she looked at Owen, a wedge of ice lodged itself in his heart, and a fraction of his soul was strangled.

"You're distracted. All morning and afternoon you've been so," Wyldon snapped, lowering his blade. Not at all sorry about ending what had to be his tenth of the day pathetic attempt at a duel with his knightmaster, Owen immediately imitated him. "Without attention, your parries are weak, and your attacks are sluggish. Without attention, you're apt to get yourself killed in battle. Is whatever that is distracting you really more important than your life?"

"Yes, my lord," Owen answered firmly, thinking of Margarry, who, as far as he was concerned, was more valuable than twenty of his lives.

"That's the incorrect response, Squire." Clearly vexed, Wyldon shook his head. "Are you even listening to me now, or is your brain still up in the clouds?"

"I'm listening to you, sir," replied Owen. Swallowing, he wished that he had provided the negative answer that Wyldon had anticipated earlier.

"Then perhaps you'd care to enlighten me on what you believe to be more important than your life," remarked Lord Wyldon frigidly, arching an eyebrow. "It can't possibly be your duty to the realm, since we have already discussed that foolishly throwing your life away is not fulfilling your obligation to the Crown at all."

"It's Margarry, my lord," whispered Owen, staring at the decaying leaves on the ground and praying that somehow they would rescue him from this uncomfortable scene. Even as he said the words, he knew that he was stepping onto a pit of quicksand. After all, Wyldon was not likely to approve of his squire's obsession with his daughter, and already he was in a towering temper. Yet, Owen couldn't have lied to him, because Wyldon could always spot a falsehood from him a league off in a thunderstorm.

"If you care about a girl at all, Owen, you are an idiot to permit any thoughts of her to distract you in a fight," Wyldon informed him sharply, maintaining his policy of ignoring all explicit references to his squire's relationship with his daughter, which was just as well, since Owen was currently wondering if any relationship existed any more between him and Margarry. "Daydreaming about her will only be the death of you in the field, and then you will have broken the heart of the girl because of your failure to discipline yourself."

"Margarry won't be devastated if I snuff it," mumbled Owen bitterly, not caring at the moment whether he was edging perilously close to insulting his knightmaster's daughter. "At the moment, I doubt she would care if I was alive or dead."

"Then it would be an even greater folly to get yourself killed over a girl whom you think doesn't care whether you're alive or dead." Wyldon shrugged, as dispassionate as if they were discussing a young woman he had never met rather than his youngest child.

"Sir, you're not helping," scowled Owen.

"I've been helping you all day, Squire," Wyldon corrected him through tight lips. "It's you who are not helping yourself by refusing to listening to me. If you were paying attention to me, you'd realize that I was explaining that you are in control of your emotions; they are not in charge of you. You, not your feelings, control your actions."

"Oh, it's so easy for you to say," shouted Owen, his need to lash out in his pain and frustration conquering any inhibitions he typically would have possessed at raising his voice like this to his knightmaster. "It's simple for you to talk about discipline when you're so cold that you can just switch off your emotions if it makes sense for you to do so. Don't you think I'd do that if I could? Don't you think I'd rather not feel betrayed if one of my friends turns out to be an enemy spy? Don't you think that I'd rather not feel grief and guilt when people I'm familiar with die? Don't you think I'd rather not care how many refugees suffer? Don't you think I'd rather not have my heart ripped in two every time Margarry snubs me?"

The second that the last syllable emerged from his mouth, Owen recognized that he had made a mistake. There was no way that Wyldon would tolerate being addressed with such blatant disrespect from his own squire, especially since it was highly probable that nobody had ever shouted at Lord Wyldon like that in his whole life.

"Don't _ever _speak to me like that again, Jesslaw." His eyes smoldering, Wyldon clenched Owen's shoulders, shaking him so hard that his teeth rattled and his brain battered against his skull. "No matter how irate or frustrated you are, such insubordination is utterly unacceptable. Am I understood?"

"Yes, sir." Willing to agree to just about anything to get Wyldon to release him from the man's painfully tight clutches, Owen nodded wildly.

"Very well." With that, Wyldon let him go, and Owen resisted the overpowering compulsion to massage his shoulders. After a pause in which Owen assumed he was tidying his thoughts, Wyldon went on tersely, "If you had thought before opening your mouth, it might have occurred to you that just because a person doesn't wear his emotions on his sleeve that doesn't mean that he doesn't have any feelings."

"I know, my lord." Unable to meet his knightmaster's eyes, Owen watched his feet kick the fallen leaves instead. "I realize that you care deeply about people, too, and I shouldn't have said that you don't. It's just that your emotions never seem to consume you like mine devour me, and maybe I'm a bit jealous of that when I feel so much that it hurts."

"Owen, the only reason that my emotions don't consume me is because I don't allow them to. If I didn't have feelings, I wouldn't have to strive to control them." Wyldon sighed, and Owen lifted his gaze upward again. "Anyway, even though your feelings pain you, I don't seriously believe that you'd want to feel nothing when a comrade perishes, when you see an innocent person displaced by warfare suffer, or when someone close to you ignores you."

"No, I wouldn't, because it wouldn't be right to be indifferent to those things," Owen admitted, biting his lip. "I spoke hastily in a moment of weakness, my lord, and I didn't really mean the words that came out of my mouth."

"There's an excellent reason for you to learn to control your temper and your tongue, then," observed Wyldon, his manner tart. "You know, Squire, that I am not asking you to not care about others, because a knight who lacks any semblance of compassion becomes a monster far worse than a Stormwing or a hurrock. All I am asking is that you learn to think before you act on your feelings. You have a good heart—nobody in their right mind would ever question that—but don't forget to use your head, too." As if to demonstrate exactly which body part he was referring to, Wyldon tapped Owen's head lightly with his knuckles. "After all, the gods had a cause for putting one on top of your neck."

"Yes, my lord," Owen said, but he couldn't imagine that his heart would ever learn to ask his head for permission to act any more than his mouth would get in the habit of checking in with his brain before speaking.

"As for the Margarry distraction—" Wyldon trailed off.

"Sir?" pressed Owen, his whole body tensing as though he were a hound that had scented a rabbit.

"I think that you should seal whatever breach has developed between you two before it widens any further."

"You don't disapprove of Margarry and I being together, then, my lord?" stammered Owen, gawking at his knightmaster.

"I love my daughter, and I would like her life to be as happy as it possibly can be. Suggesting that there is a trace of insanity flowing in her veins, she has determined that you make her happy, Owen." Here, Wyldon shrugged. "Ever since we have arrived, she has been as upset as you have been distracted. To be blunt, I would prefer not to see her in misery, and, because you alone seem to have the power to make her glad now, I want you to make her happy."

"Making her glad would make me happy, but I have no idea how to appease her." Miserably, Owen shook his head. "Sir, I don't even know why she's cross at me."

"You'd better solve that mystery immediately, then." Wyldon waved a hand in dismissal. "Go now. I know that you won't be able to focus until you've smoothed things over with Margarry. Just be aware that tomorrow morning I expect you to be fully attentive in your training with me."

Bowing, Owen hurried off to find Margarry, more determined than ever to have her explain what was troubling her. Before, he had been so intent on the agony that her coldness caused him that he hadn't bothered to consider that her frigidity might be concealing her own pain. He had been so scared that her love for him had died that he hadn't really believed that it could still exist under that impenetrable ice she had wrapped about herself, but now he understood that she must still love him if something he had done had the power to offend her so much. Now, he just had to discover what crime he had committed so that he could never repeat it. After all, maybe he didn't know what she was angry about right now, but that didn't mean he couldn't work things out with her.

Remembering how much Margarry cared for dogs and horses, Owen searched for her in the kennels and the stables first. Unfortunately, he didn't find her in either location, and, starting to be driven by a desperate desire to see Margarry at once, Owen dashed back up to the castle. Knowing how much Margarry loathed sewing, knitting, and embroidery, he could safely assume that she wasn't in the solar, so he didn't waste time checking there. Given Margarry's general aversion to the culinary arts, as well, the kitchens could also probably be eliminated…Perhaps she was in the library. Yes, that made sense. Margarry was a voracious reader, and if she wasn't in the kennels or the stables, then she could most likely be found in the library.

He was proven correct in this assessment when he burst into the library, his cheeks flushed as scarlet as autumn apples, and spotted her curled up on a window seat, her eyes whizzing from left to right in a blur as she read a book of poetry. Staring at her, Owen's mouth went as dry as sand when he noticed how the setting sun behind her made her hair shine and brought out streams of red in the brown that he had never spotted before. Great Goddess, she was beautiful, and he wanted nothing more than to sear this perfect portrait of her into his memory forever, so that he could always have it as a talisman.

Sadly, before he could etch her gorgeous posture into his memory, she moved, ruining the portrait. Lowering her book an inch, she fixed a flat gaze upon him.

"You're here!" he exclaimed triumphantly, mainly to have something to say in response to that flat look.

"I should think that would be obvious," she replied, all acerbity. "I have been here for the past hour, so that is not exactly news to me."

"I'm disturbing your solitude." Owen tried again, striding toward the window seat as he spoke. "Well, sometimes you need disturbing, Margarry."

"I've come here to read." Margarry, who had buried her nose in her book once more, flipped a page. "If you haven't come here to do the same, you might as well leave."

"I'm not going to leave until you tell me what's bothering you," declared Owen, plopping down on the seat beside her.

"You're troubling me," snarled Margarry, her eyes sizzling as she turned another page. "Of course, maybe I shouldn't blame you for distracting me when you, as a bloodthirsty savage, might not comprehend the purpose of a library, especially given that you plainly cannot read or write. After all, if you could do so, surely you would have written to me at least once since we saw each other at Prince Roald's wedding celebrations."

"Oh, so that's what this is about," muttered Owen, as his spine relaxed with relief at finally understanding what was plaguing her, and his stomach simultaneously sunk when he recalled guiltily that he had indeed neglected to write to Margarry ever since he had returned to Mastiff. Yes, he had been busy with punishment work, capturing a spy, sneaking out of the infirmary and fighting a battle, and recovering from the wounds the spy had inflicted upon him, but he still should have found the time to write a note to her.

"Don't you dare take that dismissive tone with me!" Margarry flared up like wood when a match was placed against it. The next instant, she was whacking her book against Owen's knees. "Don't act like you aren't aware that refusing to write to your sweetheart isn't an intentional slight! Great Goddess, I know you have the manners of a boar with a headache, but even you must know that."

Tired of being smacked on the kneecaps with a tome of poetry, Owen snatched the book out of her grip and tossed it onto a desk that was out of Margarry's reach.

"Now you've lost my page," Margarry glowered at him, eyeing the book that had just banged onto the desk.

"That's what happens when you use a book as a weapon," he informed her, gingerly rubbing his knees.

"It's rude to grab something from a lady without asking her permission first." Haughtily, Margarry stuck up her nose. "Clearly, even Father has not been able to hammer any manners into your head."

"It's also impolite to randomly hit people in the middle of a conversation," retorted Owen.

"Mother claims that it's every woman's privilege to slap a man at least once," Margarry countered, her nose still in the air.

"That doesn't seem fair when any man who hits a woman is automatically labeled as a brute and a scumbag," he grumbled.

"Of course it's just." She shot him a withering glance. "After all, everyone knows that, by nature, men tend to be taller and stronger than women. As such, a woman is hurt if a man hits her, but if a woman slaps a man, he is not hurt. As for feelings, woman are delicate enough to be wounded by being hit, but men, who are forever bragging about how emotionless they are, aren't."

"I don't think that I've ever bragged about being emotionless, especially not where you're concerned," responded Owen testily. "Anyway, I'm sorry I hurt your feelings by not writing to you, Margarry, but I don't believe that you have the right to be this upset with me when you admitted yourself that it took you an insanely long time to answer my letter about being in love with you. In fact, I remember that you told me it would be petty of me to penalize you for your absurdly lengthy silence. Besides, if you really wanted to communicate with me, you could have sent me a note yourself, and I would have answered. I promise you that I'll never be rude enough to ignore any letter that you send to me."

"Obviously, I couldn't write first," Margarry announced in a condescending voice. "A proper lady always plays hard to get in order to preserve her chaste image."

"I suppose that's another perk of your gender." Owen rolled his eyes. "I've noticed, Margarry, that you have the habit of conveniently following conventions that work to the advantage of your sex, and paying no mind to the ones that don't."

"Of course I do, Owen." Unfazed by the accusation, Margarry shrugged. "Men may be able to survive by virtue of their brutality, but women have to rely on their wits and their beauty. Since I am not attractive, I have to depend on my cleverness all the more. After all, being good is nice, but it doesn't help you survive in a vicious world where most people would eat each other alive if they could. Just look at what happened to dear Anwen if you don't believe me."

"Not every man is a Bevin," Owen reminded her. "Anyway, if there are so many perks to your gender, I'm wondering if my sex has any benefits to it besides being a brute, because I think we can both agree that I'm not one."

"Try telling all the corpses you've made that you aren't a brute." Before Owen could snap that he'd only been doing his duty when he created all those corpses, Margarry's nostrils flared as she continued in a harsh tone, "Of course there are perks to your gender. As a young noblemen, you can sleep with any serving wench who strikes your fancy, and everyone will blame her for being easy while congratulating you on your conquest in the same breath. Even if you get a girl pregnant, you can always deny it, and everybody will believe you and not her, since she's obviously a loose woman, and nobody can trust them."

"I don't want to sleep with anyone I don't love, and I only love you, Margarry," he protested, aggravated at her suggestion that he would ever betray her with another woman.

"That's fascinating, as everyone always states that squires are only interested in one thing," commented Margarry, twirling a strand of hair around her finger, and leaving no doubt in Owen's mind about the one thing she was referencing.

"If I was only interested in one thing, I'd be more of a fool than I am to look for it in my knightmaster's daughter," he pointed out, his gray eyes blazing. "If I was seeking meaningless sex, I wouldn't bother with you, because it certainly wouldn't be worth your father murdering me over. I'm pursuing you because I'm in love with you, and love is worth getting killed over. Now that I know I love you, I could never bed anyone else without feeling like I was being as disloyal to myself as I was to you."

"Good." Margarry's still flinty eyes narrowed. "If you ever do sleep with another girl, I'll fault you, not her, and I'll never so much as hold your hand again."

"In that case, it's obvious that you would never allow me to enjoy that benefit of my gender." Now, it was Owen's turn to narrow his eyes as he looked at her. "Are there any perks of my gender that I am permitted to enjoy while I'm in a relationship with you?"

"Yes, there is," snapped Margarry. "A perk of your gender that you'll always get to enjoy with me is that you'll forever be the one riding off into glorious battle. You'll never need to be the one who has to worry about me getting killed in a skirmish along some border. You'll never have to pray every day that you'll receive a letter as proof that your beloved isn't dead yet. You'll never have to have your hopes dashed every day that another note doesn't come."

Gulping as he realized just how much anguish he had caused Margarry by neglecting to correspond with her, he stuttered, "You had to know that I wasn't dead. You had to be aware that your father would mention it in one of his letters if I had perished."

"Yes, I knew that," growled Margarry. "However, Father's not always going to provide me with updates about whether you happen to still be among the living. Besides, if you cared about me at all, Owen, I would think that it wouldn't be a tremendous trouble for you to provide such reports if not longer letters to me regularly."

"You're right." Owen exhaled gustily. "I should have written to you. It was stupid and selfish of me not to. The only thing I can say in my own defense is that I was very busy."

"Busy?" Margarry arched an eyebrow at him, obviously unimpressed by this excuse.

"When I first got back to Fort Mastiff, I was busy with extra latrine duty," Owen began to elaborate, and here Margarry interrupted him.

"Fair enough," she conceded. "I'll accept that excuse, since I was responsible for you receiving that punishment work in the first place. That only accounts for a week's absence of correspondence. You still have over a month's dearth of letters to explain."

"Then the fort's water was contaminated, and I felt obligated to help out in the infirmary," Owen went on, and this time, he paused to accommodate Margarry's judgment.

"Well, I suppose that I would sound like a selfish person if I claimed that my peace of mind was more important than tending to the sick, so I'll grant you another week," Margarry said slowly.

"Then there was an enemy spy at Mastiff—"

"An enemy spy at Mastiff?" Margarry echoed dubiously. "You'd better not be lying to me because I'll be angrier about that than by your failure to write to me like a decent beau."

"I'm not lying," Owen established indignantly. "I'd never lie to you, and, even if I did, you'd see it on my face."

"That's true," mused Margarry. "Well, if you aren't lying, you must be jesting."

"If I was joking, you'd be able to see that on my face, too," he educated her.

"In that case, you honestly expect me to believe that there was a Scanran spy at Fort Mastiff?" she demanded.

"I'm aware that it sounds like I'm making this up, but I'm not, and you can ask your father if you doubt me," he insisted, reaching for her hand. When his fingers brushed against her palm, she stiffened as though she were about to yank her hand away from his touch, but, in the end, she did not pull back.

"Father maintains a strict policy of not discussing anything pertaining to war with his daughters for fear that they might faint or lapse into a hysterical fit of some sort," remarked Margarry dryly. "I doubt that he'll change that policy now."

"Then I can show you the scars on my arms and chest from my fight with the spy," he suggested.

"Oh, Owen, you were wounded!" she gasped, her cheeks going suddenly pale. "Father didn't so much as hint at that. If I had known, I swear I wouldn't have scolded you about not writing to me when you needed to devote all your energy to recovering from your injury if I had realized what had happened. Great Mother, I feel so selfish for yelling at you and for not writing to you when a letter from me would probably have been a great comfort to you in the healer's ward."

"A note from you would have cheered me up considerably," agreed Owen. "Still, you don't need to feel guilty about that."

"Of course I need to feel guilty about tearing you down when I should have been supporting you." Margarry shook her head stubbornly. "I shouldn't have even gotten so upset about you not writing to me when I know that a knight's first duty is to the Crown, not to his loved ones, and I should accept that if I want to have a happy marriage to one."

"I should have written, because I should have recognized that you'd be as worried about me while I was at war as I was when I thought you were trapped in the besieged City of the Gods," he replied fiercely, tightening his grip on her hand. "I'm at fault here, Margarry, not you. After all, I could have written to you when I was recovering, as I somehow found the strength to fight in a battle."

"Father made you fight when you were injured?" Margarry sounded as if she were contemplating the merits of patricide at the moment.

"No, he ordered me to follow the healers' instructions at stay in the sick ward." Grimacing, Owen thought that this wasn't exactly the sort of story he wished to recount to Margarry. "I disobeyed him and snuck out of the infirmary. When your father discovered what I had done, he was furious."

"He should have been!" Margarry channeled all the rage she had been planning to unleash upon her father upon Owen, instead. "You could have gotten yourself killed in a pointless display of valor, and then would I have done, you idiot?"

Before he could reply, she exploded, "Honestly, I don't know whether to slap you across the face for your thickheaded behavior, or to hug you because I'm so relieved that you're still alive despite your stupidity."

"Your father already hit me," Owen informed her.

"Mithros, he really must have been irate with you, then, because he never slapped Anwen, Karina, or me, although I probably deserved to be hit sometimes." As she shook her head at Owen's folly, Margarry's features softened. "Well, if you've been slapped already, then I guess that a hug is in order. Therefore, I will combat my natural tendencies toward being a shrew and hug you without any further lecturing."

Then, before Owen could absorb what was transpiring, she had flung her arms around him. As she embraced to him, her lips tickled his forehead, and then drifted down his cheek until she found his mouth. Once her lips had locked with his, he didn't want to do anything except breathe in the scent of rosewater that emanated from her skin and comb her silk hair with his fingers. He never wanted to move from this window seat. He never wished for their kisses to stop. He never desired to say anything but her name, and he only wanted to say that when his tongue wasn't preoccupied with thrashing against hers. Eventually, breathlessness forced them to separate with strawberries for cheeks.

"Gods, I love you so much," he murmured when air had flowed into his lungs again.

"If you die, you won't get to do that with me again until the afterlife." Margarry wagged a finger under his nose. "Maybe you'll value your life more from now on."

"I thought you weren't going to reprimand me anymore," he commented, grinning.

"I'm a shrew." Margarry shrugged. "You might as well accept that now, and embrace the fact that our offspring are going to be stubborn, shrewish, and stupid with the stupidity, of course, coming from you and the shrewishness, of course, coming from me."

"If you are talking about our children, you must still be planning on accepting my proposal once I get around to making it," chuckled Owen.

"Of course I am." Margarry beamed at him. "Haven't I already explained that I find the combination of stupidity, stubbornness, honesty, and bravery that you embody strangely irresistible?"

"Good." Owen broke into the broad, blissful smile of a man fulfilled.

"So, we've arrived at the understanding that I will wait for your proposal and I'll accept that your duty comes before your love of me, and in exchange you won't recklessly endanger yourself any more than your duty demands of you and you'll write to me whenever you get a chance."

"Yes," said Owen and sealed the deal with a kiss.


	47. Chapter 47

Races and Outlaws

"I can't believe that in three days you and Father are heading to the Royal Palace," remarked Margarry on the first Saturday in October. It was almost dusk, and the two of them were brushing their horses in the Cavall stables. "It feels like you two just arrived, and now you're packing up to leave again."

"Well, maybe the time wouldn't have seemed so short to you if you hadn't cold-shouldered me when I first got here," Owen pointed out.

"That was only for about a day, and you definitely deserved to be snubbed for neglecting me," sniffed Margarry, who obviously didn't appreciate that a day of being ignored by her was like an eternity in the worst part of the afterlife to Owen, lifting her nose in the air. "Insensitive comments like that from you just remind me of how wonderful life was when I wasn't talking to you."

"I suppose that's your way of assuring me that you'll miss me terribly once I'm gone," he snickered, combing a tangle out of Blaze's mane.

"You know that I miss you every time you leave." Margarry's face and tone had softened. "You're also aware that I would accompany you to the Royal Palace if Mother didn't insist that I stay here to learn how a lady oversees a harvest in her husband's absence, which means I'll be stuck here until it's practically Midwinter and Mother decides to trudge through the snow drifts to join Father for the festivities."

"The same snow drifts you and your mother will be battling through are the ones your father is trying to avoid by leaving in three days," Owen reminded her.

"I know. Father wants to make sure that you arrive in Corus well before it's time for your Ordeal." Margarry wrinkled her nose. "Father is the sort of person who would prefer getting to a meeting an hour early than a second tardy. In fact, he probably enjoys arriving an hour early just so he can scowl menacingly at all those who rush into the room a minute before the conference starts."

"And so that he can scold whoever has the nerve to run in a moment late," added Owen, remembering with a grimace all the hours of punishment work Wyldon heaped upon pages who arrived for lessons so much as a second after the bell starting class tolled.

"Yes, exactly," she agreed, laughing. Then, she sobered. "Well, at least we'll get to spend some time together before your Ordeal, even if I would have liked to have more time with you before you undergo that test."

"Me too," he muttered, trying to block the looming concept of the Ordeal out of his mind. After all, he was already having nightmares about it several times a week, so he really didn't need it dominating his daylight hours as well. "I guess neither of our wishes are going to be coming true in this instance."

"No, they aren't, so we'll just have to make the best possible use of the time we have together." Margarry's eyes gleamed at him, as she stretched out one hand to tug on his arm. "Come on. Let's go for a ride."

"Most people go for a ride before they brush their horses, not afterwards."

"Don't be such a stick in the swamp." Impatiently, Margarry rolled her eyes. "When have either of us followed conventions?"

"Never," admitted Owen, grinning, and, without further argument, he began saddling Blaze, while Margarry did the same with her white mare, Chenoa.

Once they had readied their mounts, they rode out of the stables. They had barely traveled five yards when Margarry commented, "Blaze is one of the fastest steeds Father ever raised."

"Your father told me that when he gave me Blaze," answered Owen. "My experience has shown me that your father is right. Blaze can run as swiftly as the wind, and faster on some days."

"Chenoa also seems to have wings for hooves," Margarry informed him. "I'd love for her to race Blaze if you aren't too scared that I'll beat you."

"I fear nothing," he announced smugly, his chin jutting out. Even as he said the words, he knew they weren't true. He was afraid of losing her. He was terrified that he wouldn't really be strong enough to be a knight. He was sacred that he would die not so much because he was petrified by the notion of his life force sapping out of him no matter how much he fought against the Black God, but because he was convinced that there were still untapped wells inside him. He didn't wish to perish without discovering the depths of his abilities. As he understood things, that would be a dreadful waste.

"The hubris of men makes them so easy to manipulate," chuckled Margarry. "Perhaps your ego will be bruised once my Chenoa outstrips your Blaze."

"It's going to be your pride that will be humbled when Blaze leaves Chenoa in the dust," Owen retorted.

"I won't cry all over you if you won't sob all over me." She shrugged, pointing at a forest rendered far more colorful than usual by the orange, red, and yellow leaves decking the trees located at the edge of the wheat fields. "Race you there."

"You're on." Accepting the challenge, Owen nodded, and the next second, both of them had spurred their mounts.

Responding instantly to Owen's command, Blaze rapidly progressed from a walk into a full-fledged charge. Suddenly, the golden grains waving in the faint breeze were nothing more than a blur, and Chenoa was a white stream beside him as Blaze ran toward the woods. The zephyrs wafting through the air all day had been transformed into gusting hurricanes that tore at his hair, slapped his cheeks, and rammed into his ears.

Beaming, Owen thought that there was very little that could induce a state of euphoria as quickly as a horserace with your sweetheart. After all, just feeling Blaze's muscles clench and relax in a steady rhythm beneath him made him feel connected not just to his steed but to the whole world. Nothing could ever make you feel as free as riding a mount that truly had you believing that you were flying, and leaving all life's problems behind you. Few things could ever empower and invigorate you like running against the wind on a horse could. When you were running against the wind, you knew that you had the strength and courage to conquer anything.

Seeing that Margarry, who had been neck and neck with him a minute ago, had overtaken him, he pushed Blaze onward at a higher speed. Before long, it was he who had overtaken Margarry. However, she tolerated being passed no better than he did, and, within moments, the two of them were tied again.

When he spotted that the forest was only a few yards away, Owen spurred Blaze on. Somehow, the horse found it in himself to gather enough speed that he reached the rim of the woods a nose before Chenoa.

"It was a good race," Owen said to Margarry, smiling broadly, as he dismounted and stroked a sweaty Blaze, whispering praises in his ear.

"It would have been better if I'd won," she groused, swinging off her horse.

"Don't you ever give up?" he demanded, shaking his head as he wondered whether to admire her stubbornness or be annoyed by it. Perhaps that was how most beings felt when they dealt with him, he ruminated, watching Margarry feed Chenoa a carrot.

"Never," replied Margarry, shaking her own head.

Owen was saved the necessity of responding to this by Blaze lapping enthusiastically at his fingers, suggesting that his stallion expected to be treated to a carrot as Margarry's mare had been. Trying not to think that Happy, who had been noticeably more spirited than Blaze, would have bashed his head against his owner's for forgetting to feed him a snack, Owen withdrew a carrot from his pocket.

"You're a jealous and hungry boy, aren't you?" he asked as he held out the vegetable.

Blaze's head shot forward like a rock out of a catapult, and he chomped the carrot down in one enormous bite. Then, he emitted a contented whinny and nuzzled his master.

"You're the best horse alive," murmured Owen, rubbing the pristine white line that spanned the center of Blaze's nose. He assured himself that the words didn't constitute a betrayal of Happy, since Happy, tragically, could no longer be counted among the living.

"You're wrong. Chenoa's the best horse alive," Margarry established, flopping onto a bed of brown leaves that had clustered beneath a mighty oak.

"You're delusional," snorted Owen, as he lay down beside her and took advantage of the opportunity to wrap an arm around her shoulders. "Blaze just beat your precious Chenoa, which makes him better."

"Speed isn't the only measure of superiority," Margarry countered. "Besides, Blaze only won by a hair. It wouldn't shock me at all if Chenoa was the victor in a rematch."

"I guess I should heal your wounded pride by telling you that it wouldn't surprise me if she defeated Blaze, even if that's not true," he teased, gray eyes sparkling at her.

"It would serve you right, Owen of Jesslaw, if I burst into tears at your casual cruelty toward me." Despite her remark, Owen doubted that there were many people in Tortall less likely than Margarry of Cavall to cry at the present. After all, her cheeks were pleasurably flushed with the exertion of her ride, and she couldn't prevent a wide grin from splitting her features.

"If you cry just to spite me, I won't even attempt to comfort you." Unfazed, Owen shrugged. "That's always been my policy with my sisters, and I see no reason why I should change it for you."

At the mention of his sisters, a reflective expression slid over Margarry's face. "You know, it's really funny, because when you came back to Cavall, I felt like you had returned home, but you hadn't at all. Cavall isn't your home—it's mine."

"No, Cavall isn't my home," Owen confirmed, curling a segment of her hair around his finger and admiring how it shimmered in the sunset. "Jesslaw is, and it always will be, even if I haven't set foot on an acre of it since I became a squire."

"It must be tough being a squire." Margarry chewed her lower lip. "I never really considered the fact that squires have to be on the front lines as much as knights, and then they don't even get to return to their families when they're done fighting. It must be lonely watching your knightmaster be reunited with his family when you can't be reunited with yours."

"That wasn't much of a problem for me, though," he reminded her. "I mean, I've only visited Cavall one other time-at the beginning of my squireship to your father."

"True." Margarry nodded. "Now you're back at the end of your years as a squire. It seems fitting, having Cavall be a sort of alpha and omega for your squireship."

"Well, I don't mind coming back here, since it provides me with time to see you," he reasoned. "Also, I don't mind my first visit here, because without it I might never have met you. Now, I can't even imagine life without you."

"I can only hope that your life would be as empty without me as mine would be without you in it," stated Margarry before frowning and correcting herself. "No, I don't wish that at all. I love you enough to pray that you'd be happy without me."

"I'll always be happier with you in my life than out of it." Owen leaned over and kissed her on the forehead. "Anyway, if you're so worried about my family life, you'll be relieved to hear that my sisters are arriving at the Royal Palace in mid-October because they want to be there for me when I take my Ordeal. That's what they claim, anyhow. Personally, I reckon it's more likely that they wish to torment me before my Ordeal."

"That's what Karina would do." Margarry's lips twitched wryly. "Anwen would never have been so uncharitable, though."

Briefly, Owen thought that the most uncharitable thing about Anwen appeared to be the manner in which her tragic story had impacted her family. Before he could devote any more contemplation to Anwen, however, Margarry inquired tentatively, "Is your father accompanying your sisters?"

"The letter Opal sent me assured me that he'll be at the Royal Palace for my Ordeal, but he probably won't be." As much as he wanted to, Owen couldn't prevent the bitterness from choking his voice. "Oh, when he told Opal that he'd be there, he most likely was honestly intending to be there. When it actually becomes time to be there, I doubt he'll be beside Opal and Olivia, though. That's the way it always is with him. He'll randomly realize that he does in fact have children, and feel guilty about not being a good father, so he'll make these grand promises about spending time with us, and then he never fails to break them. Sometimes it's like wine inspires him with all these awesome things he's going to do while simultaneously depriving him of the capacity to follow through on his glorious visions. By this point, even I know better than to trust him, and I'm the type of person it's simple to manipulate. It's not that he means to hurt his children—and sometimes he even means to do something special with us—but he always ends up wounding us anyway."

"That's horrible." Margarry's hand squeezed his. "Maybe this time it will be different. Perhaps this time your father will keep his word. That would delight you, wouldn't it?"

"Yes, it would," admitted Owen. "The sad fact is that even though I suspect it's hopeless, I'll still wish that he'd show up and pretend that he seriously cared about me, and, although I know he won't be there for my Ordeal no matter what he told Opal, I'll still be disappointed when he doesn't come."

"Let's not talk about anything depressing now," Margarry whispered against his ear, her lips warm and tender. "We won't worry about Ordeals and warfare right now. We'll just lay here on our bed of leaves and relish the simple miracle of being together. We won't think about the fact that we'll soon be parted again. We'll just stare out at the sunset and absorb how beautiful it is."

"That sounds like a nice idea," commented Owen, gazing out at the rippling grain fields shining copper-gold in the sunset. As he watched the sun hide itself for the night behind the distant hills, he felt the tension coiled in his muscles ease. It was hard not to be placid when taking in the breathtaking hues of the fading sun, especially when doing so in such a tranquil countryside setting.

"I understand why you and your father love Cavall so much," he murmured, feeling a peculiar reverence for the landscape. "It's beautiful."

"It is." Margarry's tone was as hushed as his. "I'd be willing to leave this place for you, Owen, as long as you have sunsets in Jesslaw."

"Strangely enough, the sun does set in Jesslaw, as well." He widened his eyes with mock surprise, and they both laughed.

However, Owen broke off abruptly when the sound of a branch cracking reached his ear. Instantly, he turned his head in the direction of the sound, adrenaline pumping through his veins even as he assured himself that it must have been nothing more than a scavenging squirrel or rabbit…No, it couldn't possibly have been a squirrel or rabbit, since those animals didn't speak Common, and a whisper had just hit Owen's attuned eardrums.

Who would be sneaking about in the woods near them? Hunters wouldn't bother being stealthy so close to the edge of the forest, woodcutters would be engaged in a noisy business, children out playing would be squealing, and other young lowers on a tryst would be giggling or kissing…

"Owen, what's wrong?" Margarry's forehead knotted.

Before he could share his discomfiture, it was transfigured into genuine alarm when a dagger was hurled from behind a maple tree, soaring directly at Margarry. For a fraction of a second, Owen was paralyzed with panic. Then, Wyldon's training surged through his body, propelling it into action. Without a word, he bolted to his feet, yanked Margarry upright, and pulled her away from the woods toward the grain fields.

As a knife thudded into the oak in the exact location Margarry's head had been reclining against a second ago and another dagger thumped into the tree where Owen's head had been, Owen whipped out his sword. He had been planning on shouting to Margarry to flee, return to the safety of the castle, and have Lord Wyldon come here with some of his men-at-arms. Unfortunately, it was already too late for that. Ten outlaws, recognizable by their tattered clothing, foul stench, and missing limbs, had surrounded the oak.

Gritting his teeth and reminding himself that the reason he wanted to become a knight was so that he could protect innocent beings from bandits, he swung at the outlaw closest to him. Satisfaction roared through him when he successfully decapitated the man.

Some of his concern for Margarry faded when he saw that she had snatched the daggers from the tree, so that she was now clutching one knife in each fist. Her eyes aflame, Margarry jabbed one of her weapons into the eye of a man, who had been aiming a dagger at her neck. When the man limped backward, holding a hand to his now blind eye, Owen plunged his sword into the bandit's chest.

The victory march blaring in his brain increased when he realized that Blaze and Chenoa had knocked the four thieves who had been attempting to steal them unconscious with solid kicks. Now that they were free of their assailants, the two horses charged forward. Three men fell victim to hooves and head butts before they could comprehend what had hit them.

Another foe's nose was chopped off by Margarry's whirling knives, and, when the man faltered, howling in agony, she slit his throat. A seventh adversary departed for the Black God's realm when Owen's blade pierced through his intestines. While that man fell, two more outlaws were dispatched by Blaze's and Chenoa's kicks.

When the tenth bandit recognized that he was fighting a losing battle alone, he fled for the sanctuary of the depths of the forest. However, he never made it, for Owen stabbed him in the spine.

In the sudden, unnatural silence that always followed a skirmish, Owen could hear every gasp that filled his lungs with much needed air and every beat of his thundering heart. Automatically, he thanked Mithros that he was still alive to hear such things.

For a minute, he and Margarry said nothing and just stood, panting, by the oak, surrounded by a bloody ring of corpses. Then, she gasped reproachfully, "You could have let that last man go. He wasn't a threat to us anymore."

"He would have been a danger to other people," Owen replied grimly, wishing that the woman he loved most in the world had not witnessed him at his most savage. 'He had to die. He would have faced hanging if he was caught, anyway, and a stab in the back is more merciful, since it's quicker."

"I'm going to vomit," choked out Margarry and was sick all over the bed of leaves they had been lounging around on less than a half hour ago. Desperate to do anything to console her, Owen grasped her shoulder as she threw up.

"Let's bring you home," he suggested once she had swiped the vomit from around her mouth with the cuffs of her sleeve. Gently, he grabbed her hands and led her back to her mare. Her face blank, Margarry mounted her steed, and, once he was confident that she wasn't about to topple off, Owen climbed onto Blaze's back.

Far wearier than they had been when they began their adventure, the two of them rode across the fields. Sensing that Margarry was traumatized by the combat, Owen hadn't expected her to say anything during their journey, but, as they neared the stables, she shook her head and moaned, "Maybe I should have persuaded Father to show me how to fight, after all."

"I thought you said at Egremont Castle that you despised violence," Owen pointed out as delicately as he could, while they handed their reins to hostlers flummoxed by the battered nobles.

"I do," she mumbled, clinging to his hand as they stumbled up the steps into the castle. "It's not like I really have a choice about fighting, though, is it? Even if you don't want a battle, someone's going to shove it upon you. Well, I'm not about to stand back and allow somebody to hurt or kill me without fighting them tooth and nail. I don't wish to be anyone's victim. When that knife thudded into the tree where I had been a second ago and where I would have been if not for you, I realized for the first time how defenseless I was. Honestly, I don't know why I didn't figure it out when I was escaping the convent. I can be so thick sometimes."

"You aren't defenseless," he soothed her, as they came into the entrance hall. "If that was the first time you picked up a weapon, it's incredible you managed to blind and kill people."

Before Margarry could respond, Lord Wyldon barked from the parlor next to the entrance hall, "Margarry! Owen! Come in here. You both were so late for dinner that you missed it as a result. Somehow, I am not inclined to regard that as a coincidence."

Abruptly cognizant of the fact that he and Margarry were coated in blood, dirt, and leaves, Owen walked into the parlor beside Margarry, who was declaring tersely, "Father, I don't give a fig about missing supper."

It seemed that after catching sight of Margarry's appearance, neither Lord Wyldon nor Lady Vivienne , who was sitting beside him on the sofa, cared about her not being present for dinner, either. With a scream, Lady Vivienne lurched to her feet and drew her daughter to her in a tight embrace.

"Great Mother, Margarry, your gown is cut and soiled with blood and dirt. Leaves are tangled into your hair. Oh, and is that vomit on your sleeves?" Without waiting for a reply, Vivienne continued in the same terrified breath, "Dear, what happened to you? Did Owen do this to you? You don't have to be afraid to tell me if he did."

For a second, Owen felt astonished that anyone could imagine that he would assault a woman like Bevin or Vinson had. The next instant, a righteous fury deluged him. If there was ever any women he wanted to beat up, it was Lady Vivienne for implying that he would ever attack Margarry, whom he loved more than life itself. Yet, he couldn't do that without proving that he was abusive. A million words to defend himself sprang to his mouth, but his lips refused to part to allow any of them to pass, since the flesh of his lips had suddenly been replaced with stone.

All he could do was stand as motionless as a statue as Margarry bristled in her mother's arms. "Don't be ridiculous, Mother! Owen would never hurt me any more than Father would you."

"You are in complete disarray, dear." Frantically, Lady Vivienne removed leaves from her daughter's hair. "He must have done _something_ to you!"

"He did nothing except save my life," snapped Margarry, extricating herself from her parent. "No matter what you think of him, without him, I wouldn't be alive. You can stop insulting him now, start apologizing, and then maybe you can get around to thanking him if you're half as well-bred as you believe you are."

Lady Vivienne was in no condition to adhere to her daughter's advice. Looking as though she were about to faint, she collapsed onto the couch, leaving it to her husband to press, "Owen saved your life? What happened, Margarry?"

"Owen and I raced our horses out to the woods. We were sitting on the edge of the forest just talking as we watched the sunset when ten outlaws surrounded us, and four more tried to steal our mounts." Tears were flowing down Margarry's grimy cheeks as she recounted recent events, and her sobs only became more wrenching as Wyldon hugged her.

Staring at her, Owen fervently wished that he could take up the story form here, but, ironically, when he actually needed to speak, his mouth had been glued shut, forcing Margarry to carry on, "They attacked us so suddenly, Father, that I would have been dead before I knew it if Owen hadn't pulled me out of the dagger's path in time. Mithros, their knife thunked into the tree exactly where my head had been a second before. There wasn't even time for me to recover from that. There was only time for more bloodshed." Burrowing her head further into Wyldon's shoulder, Margarry hiccoughed, "That's what occurred, Father. If you doubt my word, you can check for the corpses yourself."

"I believe you." Wyldon patted his child's back, and Owen was overrun with a sudden spurt of envy that he wasn't the one consoling Margarry. "You wouldn't be this distraught if you were lying. Hush now. Don't be scared anymore. You're safe here. I'll send some men out to collect the bodies so you'll never have to see them ever again."

"Father, I want to learn how to fight," sniffled Margarry, and Owen nearly jumped out of his skin. He hadn't envisioned that she would ever make such a declaration to her father. After all, if Wyldon forbade her to see a refugee camp, there was no way he would allow her to learn the fighting arts while he was still breathing.

"You are hysterical." Wyldon shook his head, and Owen thought he detected the same shock he had felt in his knightmaster's tone. "You're not thinking clearly. Why would you ever want to fight when this little taste of battle was too much for you to bear?"

"If I knew how to fight, I wouldn't be this upset. When you have experience, you don't fall to pieces like this. That's why Owen isn't a mess like me." Here, Margarry emitted a shrill giggle that Owen had never heard before and never desired to again. "Obviously, I mean he isn't an emotional wreck. Physically, he is as much of a disaster as me."

"You're talking nonsense, Margarry." Scowling, Wyldon released his daughter. "After all you witnessed today, you would be mad to even consider entering battle."

"I don't want to go into battle, Father. I just wish to learn how to defend myself," explained Margarry.  
"I just don't ever want to have to rely on Owen to save my life again, since he won't always be there to do it. Just because I don't want to be a victim doesn't mean I want to be a warrior."

"I will never teach a daughter of mine to fight." In a sure danger sign that Owen recognized from years of experience, Wyldon folded his arms across his chest. "Combat training is hard enough on boys; for girls, it is twice as difficult."

"You trained someone else's daughter to fight." Margarry rested her hands on her hips. "It's not fair to do something to somebody else's child that you wouldn't do to your own."

"I explained to Mindelan how tough it would be for her at the end of her first year. I spoke to her as if she were one of my daughters, but she decided not to heed my advice, and, not being my daughter, she didn't have to." Here, Lord Wyldon paused, and Owen's brain felt like it was about to explode picturing what no doubt must have been an awkward scene between Kel and Wyldon.

After a moment, Wyldon grunted, "Margarry, I will never teach a daughter of mine to fight. However, if you truly want to learn how to defend yourself, there are younger, less conservative men around here who might be persuaded to show you a few tricks." His eyes flicked over to his squire, who by now was feeling as useless as a fifth wheel on a wagon during these proceedings. As Owen reeled from the suggestion that he teach Margarry basic defensive skills, Wyldon went on, "Also, when you visit the Royal Palace, you'll find that the Queen and several other court ladies have taken to having morning training exercises. I'm sure it would make the day of many a progressive if the daughter of a staunch conservative attended them."

"Thank you, Father." Margarry flung her arms around Wyldon. "I promise that I won't humiliate you by showing up at the Queen's exercises."

"You won't be thanking me once you realize how demanding combat training is," snorted Wyldon. "Anyway, I'm not entirely certain that I prefer the idea of you tumbling around a practice court with Jesslaw to you attending those training exercises for noblewomen."

"Oh, but I do, Father." Margarry's tone was light, and Owen couldn't have been more in agreement with her. Envisioning his hot body pressed up against hers was enough to cause a fever to rage in his blood, and he was already starting to question just how much either of them would be able to focus on combat techniques.

"For the sake of my sanity, I'm going to ignore that improper comment, Margarry." Wyldon's lips quirked wryly. "I'm going to fetch you some soup from the kitchens. Go to your room and clean yourself up—I'll bring the food up to you. Squire, you'd better tidy yourself up as well. Both of you look like you've been rolling around in a pigsty."

Relieved to finally be released from the family conversation he had felt like he was eavesdropping upon, Owen bowed and hurried off to his room, as Marrgarry left for hers accompanied by an ashen Lady Vivienne who managed to prod herself into action at last in order to help her child clean up. Watching Vivienne cling to the railing as she climbed the stairs, Owen couldn't bring himself to feel sorry for her current frailty. After all, she had essentially accused him of abusing her daughter.

Today had not been a jolly day at all, he grumbled to himself as he entered his room and began the process of changing from his filthy clothes into his nightshirt. Sure, winning the race against Margarry and chatting with her as they stared at the sunset had been splendid. However, that wonderful memory was wiped out by the bandit attack and the bloodshed. Of course, he didn't feel guilty about slaughtering the outlaws not only because he detested their villainy but because they had dared to threaten the person who was most sacred to him. What was so horrible about the fight was that it had destroyed one of the precious, scant slivers of innocence remaining in Margarry, and he couldn't stop blaming himself for being a part of that annihilation.

Oh, yes, no matter how long he lived he would never be able to forget this day. No matter how much he wanted to, he would never be able to erase the heartbreaking quality of Margarry's sobs as she wept into her father's shoulder, nor would he be able to forget how close the hurled dagger had come to slaying her. Yet, even that wasn't what he wanted to forget most.

No, he thought as he washed the dirt and blood from his body, what he most wished to forget was the expression of sheer terror that had passed over Margarry's face when she spotted how the knife had nearly murdered her. He had never seen her truly afraid even when her father was lecturing her. For him, she was the epitome of spirit and strength, just as Kel was the embodiment of calm compassion.

Owen didn't want to contemplate how Margarry had barely escaped being killed or at the least maimed. He didn't wish to entertain the concept that she could be at the mercy of her own fears. Drawing on all the energy he had left in his body, he evicted the thought of her terrified face and remembered instead the paradoxical strength and gentleness of her hand when she squeezed his.

He told himself that he had not seen Margarry's vulnerability. She was strong enough to protect herself, and, even if she couldn't, Owen would always be there to defend her. Somehow, he would be strong enough to keep her safe.

He might have been able to convince himself of all this if his ruminations hadn't been interrupted by a knock on his door. When he answered it, he was amazed to find himself facing his knightmaster, who was bearing a tray of pungent soup, a biscuit, and a glass of milk.

"I assumed that you would be hungry, so I had the servants prepare a tray for you as well as for Margarry," Lord Wyldon educated him, offering him the tray.

Taking it with a nod of thanks, Owen asked, "How is she, sir?"

"My wife has her all cleaned up, and she'll be going to sleep immediately after she's done eating, but she's calmed herself down now." Wyldon sighed and shook his head. "Today was a tiring day for her."

"Being almost killed is draining for everyone," commented Owen, who discovered that, although he hadn't been hungry before, the heady aroma of the soup was making him ravenous.

Perhaps detecting the famished expression in his squire's eyes, Wyldon pointed at Owen's bed and ordered, "Sit and eat before the soup is cold."

Owen settled himself on his bed, but didn't pick up so much as a utensil. "It feels wrong to eat when you aren't, my lord," he remarked.

"I ate already," Wyldon responded crisply. "You didn't, and you look as though a warm meal will do you good. Eat up now."

Obediently, Owen dipped his spoon into the soup, and, after he had taken his first swallow, found it impossible to cease gulping it down. It wasn't so much the flavor, since he didn't even permit the soup to linger on his tongue long enough to determine what kind it was nonetheless whether it tasted excellent, so much as it was the comforting heat of the soup flowing down his throat into his stomach, warming him from the inside out. He was scraping the last spoonfuls out of the bowl when Wyldon spoke again.

"How are you doing, Owen? Today must have been exhausting for you, too."

"I'm fine, my lord," answered Owen, starting in on his biscuit. He knew he was lying, but there was no way he was going to even attempt to describe his emotions right now, so he would settle for fine. "I've survived worse battles."

"Yes, you have, but I thought, given your history, you might be more distressed by today than you were by some other battles." Wyldon's manner was as delicate as he could render it. Still, Owen didn't want to discuss how nightmarish it had been to have Margarry come within a hair's breadth of dying in the same fashion that his mother had. He didn't want to examine aloud how easy it was for the most important women in his life to be snatched away from him forever by outlaws. There were subjects to agonizing for even him to dredge up.

"Today just reminded me of how much I hate bandits," asserted Owen, clenching his jaw. "That's very motivating, sir."

Quiet permeated the room again, and, in it, Owen was acutely aware of his chewing as he finished his biscuit and washed it down with the cold milk. Finally, as he was returning the cup to the tray, Wyldon noted, "Neither my wife nor I have thanked you, Owen, for saving our daughter's life."

"There's no need to thank me." Resolutely, Owen shook his head. "My lord, I'd see it as my duty to try to rescue anyone attacked by bandits, but I'd die before I let them kill Margarry. In fact, I'd die before I let anyone kill her."

"You don't think you deserve thanks for that?" Wyldon raised an eyebrow.

"No, sir, only blame if I fail," said Owen vehemently.

Wyldon's eyes narrowed appraisingly as he scrutinized Owen. Mainly to distract his knightmaster from studying him in such a disconcerting manner, Owen exploded, "Your wife thought that I had abused Margarry, my lord, when all I did was save her life."

"When one of your daughters is abused, Squire, your greatest fear is that the same thing will happen to your other girls." As he often did in uncomfortably emotional exchanges, Wyldon scratched the arm that had been ravaged by a hurrock. "You are ever vigilant for signs of it, and you always assume the worst of any young man who so much as touches your daughter." Smiling crookedly, he added, "If it's any consolation, my wife's reaction was nothing personal. Had it been Karina who had returned from a ride with Caderyn in such a state, my wife would have assumed that he had assaulted her, and my wife is fond of Caderyn. She was responsible for giving him much of the fortitude it required for him to ask me for Karina's hand."

At the moment, Owen wasn't inclined to regard it as much of a consolation that Lady Vivienne's accusation had been nothing personal. In many ways, it was the same thing as being told that you wouldn't be killed for personal reasons. The fact that the attack on you wasn't personal didn't make it any less real, nor did it take away the fact that, for the victim of the assault, it couldn't help but be personal, even if that wasn't what the assailant intended. However, he never got around to establishing as much aloud, because, suddenly, his mind was flooded with a more pressing concern.

"Did you think that I had assaulted Margarry, sir?" he demanded. Lord Wyldon's opinion of him was worth about one hundred of Lady Vivienne's to him, and he hadn't been able to read his knightmaster's expression in the parlor earlier when the question of Owen's abusing Margarry had been raised.

For several tense moments, Wyldon frowned at Owen, and then he replied carefully, as though he were weighing the impact of each syllable, "No, Owen, I didn't believe that you had assaulted my daughter. After all these years of training you, I think that you are far more likely to defend than attack someone you care about. I doubt that you would be callous enough to abuse Margarry when I know that you still feel guilty about slaying a spy you perceived as a friend. Of course, if my daughter had said you abused her, I would have believed her, but, no, in answer to your question, I wasn't willing to condemn you without Margarry's testimony."

"Thanks for trusting me, my lord." Owen realized that his voice had gone oddly hoarse, and he coughed to evict the frog from his throat.

"There's no need to thank me for having faith in you, Squire, when you have earned my trust," Wyldon dismissed his gratitude brusquely.

Owen found his throat clogging as it often did when his knightmaster made comments like that, and, for a long moment, he couldn't speak. Then, he stuttered, "I can't believe that you want me to teach your daughter how to fight, sir."

"Humph, well, it would be a comfort to know that when push comes to shove my daughter will not be defenseless." His lips thinning, Wyldon shrugged. "Besides, I know that you'll treat her seriously enough that she won't feel as if she is being condescended to, but, because you care about her, you'll be gentle with her at the same time."

Staring at his knightmaster, Owen wanted to know, "Sir, do you ever do anything for just one reason?"

"Occasionally," Wyldon informed him dryly, shrugging.

"My lord, Margarry talked as though she was hopeless in the fight, but she wasn't," burst out Owen, as the idea that he should explain Margarry's role in the skirmish to his knightmaster finally occurred to him. "After it, she was very disturbed, but she was very cool-headed during it. When she realized how close she had come to being killed by the dagger, she looked terrified, but she conquered her fear quickly enough to grab the knives from the tree. She wasn't upset when she blinded and killed men. Maybe she thinks she was defenseless because I had to save her life, but that's not true, since soldiers are always rescuing each other in battle and they aren't defenseless. Anyway, most people who attack her would probably give up once she put up a fight like she did today, and instead would search for someone else to torment. After all, bullies don't want a fight—they just want a victim."

If Owen had learned anything from Joren and his cronies, it was the cowardly character of bullies.

"Hmm. Well, nobody could deny that my youngest daughter has spirit." Owen thought he saw a flash of pride flare in Lord Wyldon's dark eyes.

Owen certainly wasn't about to argue that Margarry lacked spirit. How could he when she was as strong-willed as he was? How could he when she was in the habit of unleashing her sharp wit and tongue on anyone who crossed her? How could he when she rejected as many social conventions as he did? How could he when she had displayed such courage today?

Yes, he was convinced that Margarry's spirit blazed as fiercely as his own. Perhaps that was why they had fallen in love in the first place. Maybe they had recognized in each other someone who could keep up with them and their boundless energy as nobody else could.

"Get to bed now," commanded Wyldon, slapping Owen's knee briskly and picking up the tray. "You need to rest. Even if you won't accept it, thank you for saving my daughter's life."

"Really, you don't need to thank me, sir," Owen insisted as he slid under his blankets. "Saving her life saved mine by moving me out of the path of another dagger."

"Go to bed, son," Wyldon ordered, his tone softer than it typically was when he was issuing commands, and Owen could do nothing except gape at the door as his knightmaster shut it behind him.

Wyldon had called Owen son. With another man, it could have amounted to nothing more than a casual address to a younger man of no more significance than boy or lad. Yet, with Wyldon it was different. Owen's knightmaster was very precise with his language. Owen couldn't recall Wyldon ever referring to any of the pages he trained as son. Certainly, Wyldon had never addressed him as son. He had been called Jesslaw, Owen, squire, and young man, but never son, because Wyldon didn't employ the term son with beings who weren't his son…

Did that mean that Wyldon truly regarded Owen as a son? Margarry had claimed once that her father perceived him as a son, but he hadn't been prepared to believe her. In his mind, he needed a real father more than Wyldon did a son, and, besides, he craved more emotional connections than his knightmaster did. Perhaps he had been wrong, though, to dismiss Margarry's assertion. Maybe she had been right, after all.

His musing was interrupted by a knock on the door. Startled, he hopped out of bed and opened the door to find Lady Vivienne standing before him, appearing less on the brink of fainting than before. Abruptly aware of the fact that he was wearing nothing except his nightshirt, he asked tersely, praying that she would say that she had knocked on the wrong door by accident, "May I help you?"

"No, no." Vivienne fiddled anxiously with a brooch on her gown. "I just wanted to apologize for what I said this evening. I was hysterical when I saw the shape my daughter was in, and I reacted without thinking. I didn't mean to insult you, and I had no reason to believe you a brute, so I beg your pardon for my thoughtless words."

"I forgive you, my lady," Owen replied, realizing as the words left his mouth that he wasn't just lying because even he knew enough etiquette not to turn down an apology from his knightmaster's wife. No, he was accepting her apology because he had already forgiven her. That is, he had understood that her words had done him no injury, since they hadn't changed the opinions of the people, Margarry and Wyldon, who mattered to him. Lady Vivienne's opinion didn't mean anything to him at all, and he wasn't going to let the words of beings who weren't important to him hurt him.

"Margarry has confided in me that you two would make your relationship more permanent if you could," Vivienne continued disjointedly, her fingers still tugging on her brooch. "I think that you proved today that you would do anything to protect my baby girl, and I know that she would do the same for you. That makes you well-matched, in my opinion, and I shall tell my husband this. Naturally, I can promise you nothing, although I can assure you that it would be most peculiar for my husband to refuse both Margarry and me anything."

"Thank you, my lady." Owen bowed. Again, the words were sincere, for, although Vivienne's opinion still didn't mean anything to him, he knew that it mattered a great deal to Lord Wyldon. Even if Margarry said that her father had already consented in a fashion to her marrying Owen, he still thought that it was better to have Lady Vivienne as an advocate than an enemy. If she spoke in his favor to her husband, he would be most grateful to her.

"That is all I have to say to you now." Vivienne finally stopped toying with her brooch and glided down the corridor. "Good night, Squire Owen."


	48. Chapter 48

Author's Note: This chapter is fluffy and pointless, but those of you who have consumed between three and seven beers before reading may enjoy it, anyway. This is just one of those chapters that sounded better on my head than on paper (or computer screen to be precise in such crucial matters.) Consider yourself forewarned.

Ready

"You've been unnaturally quiet all day, Squire," observed Lord Wyldon three days later when they were returning to Corus and camping in a meadow for the evening. Watching the wildflowers bow to each other in the wind, Owen thought that it was odd to have his knightmaster comment on an absence of his incessant chatter, which he knew peeved Wyldon. "What's on your mind?"

At this point, Owen took advantage of the fact that his mouth was already full of salted and dried meat to postpone replying to his knightmaster. After all, it was ill-mannered to talk with his mouth loaded with food, but it was not impolite to chew a bite of meat longer than a toothless grandmother would. That meant that he could, hopefully, stall long enough to devise a safe answer to the older man's inquiry.

Certainly, he wasn't going to admit to Lord Wyldon that he was thinking about Lady Vivienne's tacit assurance that she would support him if he ever mustered the requisite courage to ask Wyldon for permission to wed Margarry. More importantly, he wasn't about to confess to Wyldon that he had been reliving his training sessions with Margarry. Only someone well-versed in torture methods would be able to draw from his lips that he was remembering how her ponytail had swung around her shoulders as she learned to kick and punch properly. How wonderful her sweaty hair smelled when it dangled onto his cheek as they wrestled was a secret that he wanted to clutch in the deepest part of his heart forever. How seductive she had appeared when she was sprawled on the ground beneath him with her hair spread around her head like rays from the sun was something he had no desire to describe to anyone, least of all his knightmaster. How the blood raging through his veins had driven him half mad whenever her hot body pressed against his was nobody's business but his and Margarry's.

Finally, when the meat could no longer be mashed any further, Owen swallowed, and, aware that it was perfectly normal for a squire to worry about his Ordeal as it rapidly approached, asked, "My lord, do you think I'm ready?"

For once, he didn't have to fret about his face or voice betraying him in a lie. After all, it wasn't difficult to inject earnest concern into his voice and expression when he was genuinely terrified of his Ordeal. When he knew that squires had died or been rendered insane by the Chamber, he couldn't help but fear that the Chamber would shatter him in the same manner. Every time he recalled the shadowed gazes of all those he had seen successfully emerge from the Chamber, his stomach knotted, because he was aware that if he was lucky he would only come out of it that haunted. As a rule, he didn't regard himself as a coward, yet it was hard not to be petrified of the Chamber when even the bravest emerged from it rattled and altered in some indefinable, irrevocable fashion. The Chamber wasn't an enemy that could be beaten with weapons, and, as a warrior, that alone disconcerted Owen.

Wyldon was silent for a long moment in which Owen could clearly hear every crackle of their campfire. Wyldon's dark eyes were distant as he organized his thoughts, but they became sharp again when they fixed on his squire, and he answered, "You've seen more action than many squires have before undergoing their Ordeals, and, to be blunt, you and your friends shouldn't have even survived your Scanran jaunt, so, to answer your question, yes, Owen, I believe you're ready."

"But the Ordeal isn't really a test of fighting ability, is it, sir?" frowned Owen, who wasn't nearly as reassured by his knightmaster's assessment as he might have imagined he would be.

"No, the Ordeal isn't a test of fighting ability," Wyldon agreed, stroking his bad arm. "It's a test of whether a squire has the necessary combination of stubbornness and flexibility to survive as a knight. A knight who cannot adapt to changing circumstances would kill himself and anyone unfortunate enough to be under his command the instant things go awry in battle. A knight who lacks determination could never prevail in a difficult fight and would be useless to his realm. Warfare is often a fair indicator of who will snap in the Chamber from a lack of flexibility or stubbornness, and the more one experiences battle, the more prepared one is to handle the Ordeal, although every battle brings with it painful memories and the Ordeal can always be the straw the breaks the stallion's back." His eyes haunted, Wyldon shrugged. "The Chamber is not merciful, Squire, and this country could not afford for it to be soft on anyone. However, I do believe that you are enough of a fighter to survive it. Of course, it is not really my opinion that matters. It is the Chamber's."

"Well, I don't think I'm prepared to be a knight, so I couldn't honestly blame the Chamber if it felt the same way, my lord," mumbled Owen, staring glumly down at a hole in his piece of cheese. Right now, he felt as hollow as the gap he was studying the in the cheese.

As much as it shamed him to acknowledge the truth even to himself, Owen was afraid that he wouldn't be able to function on his own as a knight. As aggravating as Lord Wyldon's overbearing personality could be, it had been oddly comforting to know that he could depend on the older man for direction and guidance. After all these years of dreaming about being an independent knight, he discovered that he didn't wish to leave Wyldon's side. It wasn't just apprehension that wanted to keep him there; it was also loyalty to the man who had taught him so much and asked for nothing in return except the respect he deserved.

Looking at the wildflowers that dotted the meadow he and Wyldon were camping in, Owen fervently wished that, like them, he didn't care where he grew.

"Every squire is nervous about becoming a knight. Every squire is afraid that he doesn't know enough to survive without his knightmaster. Every squire is terrified that without his knightmaster he won't be able to make correct decisions." As he established as much, Wyldon smiled crookedly. "Even though my knightmaster and I did not enjoy the most cordial of relationships, as I neared my Ordeal I would have consented to remain his squire for another twenty years. Although I invested hours as a squire dreaming about my time with my knightmaster finally ending, when the time came for my Ordeal, I wanted nothing more than to cling onto him and never let go."

Listening to Lord Wyldon explain how horrible it had been for him to separate from Laurent of Hershelfield, Owen remarked inwardly that leaving your knightmaster was probably a hundred times worse if you actually had any real warmth in your relationship. Oh, and there was warmth between Owen and Wyldon. Granted, they argued often, but their disagreements almost always ultimately served to pull them closer together in the end. Sure, Wyldon wasn't a perfect knightmaster and Owen was an improper squire if ever there was one, but their relationship was gloriously dysfunctional. Wyldon was undeniably a stern and demanding taskmaster, but Owen wouldn't have wanted to be anybody else's squire. After all, no one else could have disciplined him without crushing his spirit as Wyldon had. Anybody else would have continued to allow Owen to be completely wild or have stomped his spirit out. In the end, even though at first he had been convinced that their pairing was created in the most horrid section of the underworld, Owen was certain that Wyldon was the best possible knightmaster for him, and he didn't want to strike out on his own.

As though he could read some of Owen's thoughts, Wyldon continued, "I imagine that it's even more challenging for you, Owen. After all, I've taught you for practically eight years instead of just the usual four. That's provided me with an uncommon monopoly on your instruction and offered a longer time in which to form attachments. Perhaps that's not a good thing since variety can be valuable in education, and you were deprived of the opportunity to have a knightmaster who wasn't also your training master."

"You're my knightmaster, and I wouldn't want any other one, sir," Owen stated fiercely, sticking out his chin.

"You're my squire, and, no matter how many times you take on the whole world, part of me will always see you as just my young squire," Wyldon returned gruffly.

"I'm not sure whether that is a compliment or insult, my lord, and so I don't know whether I should be glad or offended." Owen shook his head, wishing that his knightmaster didn't have such a vexing penchant for making baffling comments.

"It's neither a compliment nor an insult; it is merely a statement." Wyldon's lips twitched upward wryly. "It's my way of saying that not everything has to change after you pass your Ordeal. Odds are high that once you're knighted, you won't be stationed with me, which is just as well, because you need your independence from me. That doesn't mean that we have to have no contact with each other, though. I realize that you have no shortage of friends to confide in, but if you ever want advice from someone older and more experienced, you can feel free to write to me. No matter how busy I am, I promise that I will find the time to answer you."

Here, Wyldon paused to clear his throat before resuming, "After I was knighted, my former knightmaster and I only interacted with each other if our military duties required it or if etiquette demanded it at social functions. Our relationship had always been a business one, and there was really nothing to tie us together once we were no longer knightmaster and squire. I'd like things to be different for you and me, Owen. You've matured greatly since I first took you as my squire, but you aren't done developing yet, and it would please me very much to continue to watch you grow. It would make me extremely happy if I could keep being a part of your life." Again, Wyldon cleared his throat before adding, "Of course, I respect your right to be independent. If you wish, after your Ordeal, we will only interact with each other when the Crown requires that we serve together on the battlefield or when we both can't escape attending a party."

"That's not how I want it to be at all," insisted Owen vehemently. He wanted Wyldon to be a part of his life, and he was relieved that his knightmaster felt the same way he did. He wished to know that he could still turn to Wyldon for guidance even after he was knighted. No matter how old he got, he would still desire to hear Lord Wyldon's praise and criticism, because, no matter how old he was, Wyldon's approval and affection would be very important to him. After all, he had plenty of friends that he cared deeply about, but he only had one real father figure.

It wouldn't even annoy Owen too much if Wyldon forgot the "former" aspect of former squire when he lectured, since Owen figured that, in the final analysis, he would always be Wyldon's squire. No Ordeal could ever change that, and that notion was strangely soothing.

Wishing that he could express verbally all the emotions bubbling inside him, Owen burst out, "Sir, I think of you as more of a father to me than my biological one, and I've practically reached the point where I can scarcely envision my life without you in it."

As soon as he recognized the words that had spilled from his mouth, Owen was appalled with himself. His cheeks ablaze, he stared at the burning kindling in the fire. He was a fool to admit his feelings so openly to Wyldon when he should have remained silent about exactly how much his knightmaster meant to him…The fact that he regarded Wyldon as more of a father to him than he did Lord Orrin was definitely something he should have limited to sharing with Margarry, who would never whisper his secrets to a soul and who had already discerned the truth before he confessed it to her, anyway.

Owen didn't tear his gaze away from the campfire as Wyldon moved around the fire to sit beside him, and he didn't dare glance at his knightmaster until he felt a hand squeeze his shoulder gently. When he found the courage to look at Wyldon, the man's eyes were soft, just as his tone was as he responded, "I'm honored, Squire, that you perceive me as a father."

"You're not angry at me for telling you that then, my lord?" Owen couldn't prevent the disbelief from shading his voice. Nor could he keep his cheeks from persisting in their burning and his heart from pounding.

"Of course I'm not cross with you. No sane man would be mad at someone for seeing him as a father," Wyldon assured him crisply. Owen barely had time to recover from the death of this disbelief before another reason to be incredulous was thrust upon him. "As I said, I am honored that you regard me as father, and I believe that it is only fair of me to inform you that I think of you as the son my wife unfortunately was never able to provide me."

"You do, sir?" Owen gawked at Wyldon. Yes, he had hoped on dozens of occasions that Wyldon might perceive him as a son, and when Wyldon had referred to him as son he had dared to suspect that perhaps Wyldon really did view him as a son. However, there was a world's difference between hoping or suspecting and knowing. Now he knew that Wyldon saw him as a son, and that information was too much for his brain to handle. "I mean, you called me 'son' three nights ago, but…"

"I meant precisely what I said," declared Wyldon briskly, and Owen discovered that his vision had abruptly become blurry as moisture welled in his eyes. "After you saved my daughter and refused to accept thanks for it, I couldn't have loved you more if you were my biological son, and I thought you deserved to know at last just how much I cared about you, Owen."

"At last, my lord?" Owen pressed, suddenly eager to understand just how long Wyldon had regarded him as a son.

"While you were on your mission in Scanra, when I was praying to Mithros one night, appealing for him to bring you back to Tortall safely because you weren't just anyone, you were my squire, I found myself using the word son, instead. Well, you don't lie to the gods, Owen, and that's when I realized the truth that I cared about you as much as I would if you had been my son." Grinning lopsidedly, Wyldon clasped Owen's shoulder again. As it occurred to Owen that after he had returned to Tortall, Wyldon had referred to him less as Jesslaw and more often as Owen or squire, Wyldon remarked dryly, "You might remember that I hinted at my feelings at Egremont Castle when I told you that if I had a son, I would want him to be as stubborn and brave as you, but if you were my son, I would have to box your ears for your insolence and defiance."

"I had no idea what you meant, sir," commented Owen, shaking his head as he reflected that it was perfectly in keeping with Wyldon's character to conceal the ultimate compliment in an insult and a threat. "Margarry guessed, though, but I wasn't ready to believe her. I thought that I needed a father much more than you needed a son."

Before Wyldon could reply, something that had been eating away at the rear of Owen's psyche ever since he had recognized that he perceived Wyldon as more of his father than he did Lord Orrin came pouring out of his lips, "My lord, is it wrong that I think of you as more of a father to me than my birth father? Am I betraying him by loving you more than him?"

For a tense minute that lasted an eternity, Owen listened to the night sounds around them before Wyldon sighed, "Mithros, Squire, you're always asking questions, and many of them are as hard to crack as nutshells."

Before Owen could stutter out an apology, Wyldon went on slowly, "There are some moralists who claim that if we feel like committing a crime, we have acted as wrongly as if we have perpetrated the crime. Personally, I have never subscribed to this theory. I don't believe that we can control what scares us, what angers us, what soothes us, what uplifts us, who we like, who we dislike, who we love, and who we hate. Those decisions aren't always logical, and they often are made by our hearts without our consent. As such, I don't think that emotions are things we can choose or feel guilty about possessing. What we do choose are our actions. Whether or not we decide to act upon our feelings is up to us, and I believe we are responsible for our deeds, not our emotions."

"Are you saying that I can only betray my father by my actions and not by my feelings, sir?"demanded Owen, gnawing on his lower lip.

"You could say that." Wyldon nodded. "In my opinion, Owen, as long as you remain a dutiful son to your father, you have not betrayed him. As long as you fulfill your obligations to him, you haven't wronged him, and you don't need to feel remorseful."

"I still feel like a traitor to him sometimes." Miserably, Owen shook his head.

"Squire, I do not enjoy speaking ill of your father to you." Wyldon's lips compressed into a thin line. "However, I will point out that if your father was concerned about being the only father figure in your life, he should have put more effort into being a parent to you. Since I am not known for my warmth toward my students, you must have needed a father very much to seek one in me."

"I should have made him want to be a parent to me," argued Owen, because a part of him always wanted to believe that he was responsible for how little his own father cared for him. Somehow, it was better for him to think that he was the one at fault, and his father was the victim than that he was the victim and his father could be wrong. "I should have made him proud of me, my lord."

"Don't be ridiculous, Owen." In a gesture that seemed to be half reproof and half encouragement, Wyldon slapped his squire's knee. "Any man would be proud to call you his son. Even when you were ten, you were brave enough to stand up to me, something that many adults would never have the nerve to do. You would sacrifice anything for your friends. You would give your life for those you love without a second thought if it was necessary. You still find it practically impossible to lie. When you are injured, you have more spirit than most people have at the peak of their strength. Mithros knows that I am proud that you regard me as a father figure, and, if your birth father cannot see anything good in you, I think that says a lot more about him than it does about you."

"I must have done something horrible that he could never forgive me for around the time I was five, sir." Owen certainly wasn't going to believe that his only unpardonable offense was to have inherited his mother's gray eyes, just as Opal's transgression was to have a lilting singing voice like their mother, and Olivia's was to have the same reserved personality their mother had possessed. If his father didn't want to meet his eyes, Owen wanted it to be because of something he had done, rather than because of how he looked. It didn't matter that he knew he wasn't responsible for his father's indifference; he still wished to believe he was.

"To this day, Squire, most of your crimes are not committed out of a sense of malice, but rather out of a misguided conviction that you are doing the right thing." Wyldon's hand found Owen's shoulder again and clasped it. "At the age of five, I doubt that you would have the spite in you to commit an unforgivable offense, because, at that age, you probably wouldn't even understand what you did wrong. It's a parent's job to teach their child proper behavior—not to give up on them. If people were born perfect, they would have no need of parents at all."

Owen couldn't argue with that when he knew that he had never chosen to have gray eyes. After all, if he could have picked his eye color, he would have selected any color but gray, so that looking into his eyes wouldn't pain his father. Since he couldn't debate the point anymore, all he said was, "I want my father to be proud of me. I want him to love me."

He was well aware that he sounded like a petulant child, but, at the present, he didn't care. In a way, he was just being honest, because he was a petulant child about this. Although having the love of his sisters, his friends, Wyldon, and Margarry should have been more than enough to make him happy, it wasn't. Something inside him had determined that to be completely happy he required the love and approval of his natural father, and that part of him simply did not take into account the fact that he was unlikely to earn either when his father paid far more attention to wine than Owen.

"I know." Wyldon's hand tightened around Owen's shoulder, and Owen thought that the man did understand. "Owen, you have to realize that there will never be a time in our lives in which everyone likes us or approves of our actions. If we make a decision that helps ten people, we might hurt one being in the process, and that one individual will hate us for that. No matter how honorably we try to conduct ourselves, there will always be those who claim that we didn't behave virtuously enough, or that we permitted our consciences to hinder us too much. It's a law of human relations that for every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism. That's why we would be foolish to pin our hopes and self-respect on something like having everybody approve of us that is literally impossible to achieve."

"I don't want everyone to like me, my lord," pointed out Owen defiantly. "I know that's stupid, and it's never going to happen, because I've encountered plenty of people who hated me just because my cheerfulness bothered them. I just want certain people to like me and approve of me. I just don't wish for the people who matter to me to hate me."

"Then you've become ensnared in a smaller version of the same web that traps beings who live their whole lives seeking everybody's approval," Wyldon told him. "You have made your view of yourself contingent upon the opinion others have of you, even though you have no control over their feelings, and it's unwise to determine your self-worth based on anything you don't have power over."

"So it's wrong of me to care if my friends think that I'm loyal to them? It's wrong of me to worry about my actions or words hurting Margarry or someone else I love? It's wrong of me to consider your reaction before I do something I know you'll disapprove of?" Owen demanded. Glaring at his knightmaster, he went on fervidly, "Well, I don't care if it is wrong or stupid, sir. I'm still going to allow it to matter to me what my friends, you, and Margarry think about me. It would feel immoral for me not to care about the impact my actions of have on those closest to me."

"You misunderstand me, Owen," stated Wyldon crisply. "You should never betray your friends by word or deed. You should always strive to be compassionate and respectful to everyone, especially to those you love. You should try never to wound or anger anyone, especially those close to you. Those are all things that you have control over, and you have a duty to yourself and to everyone else to act as morally as you can. However, you don't control how someone will react to the manner in which you choose to treat them. In the nursery, we are raised with stories that instruct us that if we act fairly and respectfully in our dealings with others, people will always like us as a result. That is often the case, but it is also entirely possible that someone can respond to kindness and respect with hatred or indifference. It may not seem just or rational, but you can't control the feelings of others, and you can't make people love you."

"I made you love me, my lord," argued Owen, his jaw tightening. If he could make a man as frigid as Wyldon love him like a son, he could force his natural father to love him if he tried hard enough.

"No, you didn't," Wyldon corrected him mildly. "It was a choice that I made. You can't force someone to let you into their heart; they have to decide to admit you themselves. When you first recognize that you don't have ultimate power over who does or doesn't love you, you feel very helpless, but, in the end, that knowledge is a balm to you when you have done everything you can to earn someone's love and they refuse to grant it to you."

"How did you learn all this, sir?" Owen couldn't restrain himself from shooting an amazed look at his knightmaster. After all, it was always shocking when the emotionally-stilted Lord Wyldon was able to provide him with some true insight into the realm of feelings.

"The hard way," replied Wyldon, his mouth twisting ironically. "I remember being in a similar quandary when I was your age."

"You do?" Owen couldn't help but blinking in astonishment. Even though he was gradually discovering that he and his knightmaster had more in common than he could ever have imagined, it was still overwhelming every time another similarity was revealed. Of course, he thought, studying Lord Wyldon, maybe he shouldn't be so taken aback whenever it occurred.

Perhaps he should have figured out by now that while his knightmaster might not have answers to all of Owen's most pressing questions, Wyldon did understand them, because he had asked them himself. Maybe it should have occurred to Owen before now that if Wyldon saw his younger self reflected in his squire, then in some deep and fundamental way, he must have struggled with the same problems Owen wrestled with.

For the first time, as he locked eyes with Wyldon, Owen comprehended that, like him, Wyldon must have learned to walk, to talk, to run, to ride, to fall, to fight, and to wage war. Just as Owen had fallen in love with Margarry, Wyldon had fallen in love with Vivienne. Like Owen, Wyldon had experienced fear, anger, and grief, even if he didn't always show his emotions. There must have been times when Wyldon, like Owen, had carried others when he barely had the strength to move himself, and there probably had been occasions when, like Owen, he had turned a blind eye to people standing on the side of the road with their hands outstretched for help. Sometimes, like Owen, Wyldon must be convinced that he had done far more than anyone had a right to expect of him; other times, like Owen, he must have felt like a charlatan and a failure. In short, Wyldon was a man just like Owen, and, although Owen would live through his own time, the same sun that rose on Wyldon would rise on him, and the same seasons that coursed through Wyldon's life would move across his. He and Wyldon would always be different, but never as different as Owen so often envisioned.

He was so overcome by the epiphany of perceiving Wyldon as a man rather than a teacher, father, or commander that he almost didn't hear Wyldon explain, "I've already told you, Squire, that when I was four, my brothers were three and two, and my sister was only a few months old, my father died in a battle against Carthaki raiders. My father was always off fighting, and so I never really knew him at all. With four children to raise, my mother would have been smart to remarry, but she was too independent-minded to want to relinquish control of the fief she had inherited from my father to another male, so she never remarried, and I never had a stepfather. When I was little, that didn't trouble me too much, because my mother was so overbearing that having a stepparent in my life only meant that someone else would be trying to control me as far as I was concerned."

"I wouldn't know much about stepparents, either," remarked Owen. "My father never remarried after my mother was killed."

"I'm glad we could find a topic that we are both equally ignorant about." Wyldon sighed and shook his head. Then, he continued, "Anyway, I didn't really mind not having a father figure until I was an adolescent. It was at that point that I realized that everybody else seemed to have one, and I started to wonder what it would be like to have one. When Laurent of Hershelfield asked me to be his squire, I hoped that with time an affectionate bond would develop between us, and, even as time passed and it became clearer that would never happened, I persisted in wishing that it would." Smiling crookedly, Wyldon observed, "I could be very stubborn back then."

"Time hasn't changed your personality much in that regard, my lord," snickered Owen.

"Time hasn't lessened your impertinence, young man." Lightly, Wyldon rapped Owen's head with his knuckles. "Anyhow, I have already admitted to you that I was willful, defiant, and prone to making sarcastic remarks as a squire, but I also did long for my knightmaster to be proud of me, and I did pour all my energy into my lessons. I hoped that would please him, but it didn't. He never acknowledged how much effort I put into my training, he never praised me if I mastered something I had difficulty with previously, he would almost always find something however miniscule to criticize about whatever I had done, and on the rare occasion when he couldn't, he would say nothing at all. Every time he paid no attention to the fact that I had put a great deal of time into doing something well, it would feel worse than a smack. Whenever he pointed out a minor mistake that I made in what otherwise would have been a perfect maneuver without mentioning any of the things that had been right about it, frustration would well inside me. I'm not saying that he shouldn't have commented on the small errors I made, because it was his responsibility to do so, but I think my morale and our relationship would have improved vastly if he ever noticed how hard I worked or some of my successes instead of just my failures. "

Biting his lip, Owen realized that Wyldon knew how it felt to pour all of your effort into something only to have your knightmaster point out all the flaws and explain to you in mind-numbing detail exactly how you could have accomplished the task better. He understood how much it hurt when that happened, how exasperated with yourself and your knightmaster it could make you, and how infuriating it was to have your best efforts shown to be not good enough. Of course, Wyldon had suffered worse than Owen. Wyldon's praise of Owen might have been sparing, but at least it happened.

"Even though I knew that nothing I did could ever truly please my knightmaster, I continued to try to do so until I took my Ordeal," Wyldon concluded. "It was only after I was knighted that I recognized that I was an idiot to base so much of self-esteem on the opinion of a man who, quite frankly, was never going to approve of my actions. Only then could I understand that, while having my former knightmaster's love would have been nice, it was never going to happen, and I had to accept that. Instead of pursuing something unattainable, I comprehended at last that I should channel that energy into the relationships I had with people whom I loved and who loved me back."

"I wish that it hadn't taken so long for you to realize that you can't make someone love you, my lord," murmured Owen, ruminating on how much anguish Wyldon would have spared himself if only he experienced this revelation earlier.

"Just as I wish that it hadn't taken you all these years to realize that." Wyldon nodded, his eyes grimmer than usual.

"I don't want to give up on my father." Owen crossed his arms over his chest.

"Sometimes what we want isn't what's best for us in the long run," Wyldon reminded him. "Sometimes it's wiser to fold a weak hand, minimizing losses, than to keep playing it."

"Maybe you're right," admitted Owen after several minutes' hesitation. "Perhaps I should just focus on what I do have, instead of harping on what I don't. Thinking about what you don't have can only make you miserable."

Gazing at Lord Wyldon, Owen recognized abruptly that it was a waste of time and energy to mourn the fact that his natural father wanted nothing to do with him when he had a father in his knightmaster, and few men could have been a better father to him than Wyldon. The next second it rammed into his head that he had never really demonstrated to Wyldon how much the older man meant to him. For all that he grumbled that Wyldon was colder than Midwinter ice, it was almost always Wyldon who commenced their more tender conversations, and it was always Wyldon who reached out a hand for an affectionate gesture, even if it was only a shoulder squeeze or a quick swat on the knee.

Suddenly, Owen found himself asking himself why that was. After all, he was not shy about expressing his feelings, so why was it always like pulling teeth to get him to describe to Wyldon how much he appreciated his knightmaster? Similarly, he wasn't hesitant about making physical contact with others. He hugged, kissed, and touched Margarry whenever he got an opportunity. With his friends, he wasn't afraid of roughhousing, enthusiastic claps on the back, or hair ruffling. Why did he have such inhibitions about being the one who reached out to touch his knightmaster?

He puzzled over this for a few moments, and then realized that he didn't want to discuss how important Wyldon was to him or offer a physical display of affection because he was terrified of being rejected by Wyldon as his own father had pushed him away. That's why he had been so scared when he confessed that he saw Wyldon as more of a father than Lord Orrin, but Wyldon hadn't shoved him away then…

The next second he was hugging Lord Wyldon, because suddenly he had understood that while his knightmaster might stiffen in surprise at the hug, he would not pull away immediately. Abruptly, it seemed very crucial that Owen hug Wyldon. After all, Wyldon had never received a hug from a son before, and a hug, like a tear, said more than words could ever explain. Still, Owen figured that he should give words a try, anyway, so, as he wrapped his arms around Wyldon, he muttered, "I love you, sir."

For a second, Wyldon tensed, and then he relaxed. He returned the embrace for a moment, and then pushed Owen away, saying, "I love you, too, son. Now, get some sleep. We have a day's hard riding ahead of us tomorrow, after all."

As Owen spread out his sleeping mat and crawled underneath his blankets, he thought that although the past could never be altered or erased, with every second history was written, and, thanks to Wyldon, he was ready to write his own history.

e nHe He


	49. Chapter 49

Author's Note: Again, this chapter is a little bit fluffy, but, in my mind, Owen deserves some time to rest and recuperate from all the torture I've put him through in the past before I shove him into the Chamber for his Ordeal. (He'll be preparing for that next chapter.) Anyway, this chapter does serve a wee bit of a purpose because it prods Owen along in the direction of proposing to Margarry, because we all know that he wants to do it and he's just afraid to…

Early Midwinter Gift

Owen had been at the Royal Palace long enough to be bored even with the hours of training Wyldon was putting him through daily when his sisters arrived there, which meant that he was actually rather grateful for their arrival. After all, even if they had just come to taunt him, at least retorting would provide him with something new to do. Besides, although he would never admit it aloud, he had missed his younger sisters, and it would be nice to see them again. Given that he felt this way, it was hardly surprising that he went to visit them in their chambers during his downtime the first evening they were in the Royal Palace.

"Owen!" Opal exclaimed, throwing down her embroidery the instant he entered the parlor of the quarters she was sharing with Olivia. As the embroidery landed on the sofa, Opal ran up to her brother as fast as her cumbersome court dress would permit. She flung her arms around him as she hadn't done since they were both little and hugged him tightly. Feeling less abashed by this display of affection rather than mockery from his sister than he might have imagined he would, Owen returned the embrace.

For a minute, they clung to each other, neither of them saying anything else. Then, in unison, they separated to study one another. Glancing at his sixteen-year-old sister, Owen was somewhat astonished to see that she seemed to have increased her chest and hip size again, although, other than that, she appeared the same as ever. At any rate, her amber eyes still blazed with mischief even when she wasn't teasing anyone, there was the same willful tilt to her chin, her curly brown hair still obstinately refused to remain in the styles she attempted to put it in, and her lips still hadn't lost their stubborn smile. Before he could make any comment about her appearance, Opal spoke.

"You look—different," she remarked, her eyes returning to his face after drifting all over his body. Somehow, he knew she wasn't just referring to the fact that he was more muscular and taller than he had been last time they had met. No, she had spotted in him the same changes that he had detected in his yearmates as they returned to the Royal Palace to undergo their Ordeals. Just how he saw in his yearmates how their faces reflected like shattered mirrors of innocence the horrors that they had witnessed while serving the realm as squires, Opal must have noted the same subtle shift in his expression. Like he could spot the hardened purpose in the eyes of his peers, Opal had noticed the same phenomenon in him.

Of course, he told himself, it wasn't too shocking that such changes had occurred with him or with any of his yearmates. Everyone started out as a squire thinking they would live a glorious life of service and adventure. Everybody began picturing their successes, not their failures. After all, victories could be daydreamed about in a vague manner, but failures were more particular; they couldn't be envisioned. Yet, even though failures couldn't be imagined as triumphs could be, they still happened. With the years, a squire accumulated not only satisfactions but also crushing disappointments and heartbreaking losses. Imprinted in the memory of every squire were hundreds of things they wished they had never seen. Knighthood was so much more complicated than any of them could ever have understood as they polished their sword hilts and dreamed of being chosen as a squire to a fighting knight.

That was why Prosper of Tameran's body and magic were more honed than ever, his edge was sharper, and Owen saw more of Prosper's frustration and less of his humor when they had practiced archery together yesterday afternoon. That was why Teron of Blythdin, who had always been taciturn, spoke even less now, and, when Owen, attempting to draw him into a conversation the other day in the mess hall, had mentioned this to him, Teron had merely pointed out grimly, "There is less to say now."

Of course, even when he had seen all these alterations in his yearmates, Owen hadn't really thought that he had changed in any obvious fashion himself. Yes, he imagined that sometimes the exuberance that danced in his gray eyes sometimes switched abruptly to a shadowy sadness when he remembered Walden's betrayal, the destruction at Giantkiller and Haven, or the deaths of any of his friends who were now in the care of the Black God. Yet, there must have been some notable differences in him for Opal to detect them so easily…

This notion made him feel oddly queasy. It was a peculiar sensation to realize that you had leaped forward and changed so drastically while your sister had remained essentially the same as she had been before.

"I mean, of course, that you've grown a lot." Opal emitted a laugh that seemed rather forced, and Owen suspected that perhaps she was eager to move the discussion onward because she was experiencing equally discomfiting thoughts. "Well, you've grown physically, but I think we'll still have to hope that you've grown wiser."

"I may not have grown wiser, but at least I haven't grown uglier as you have," he countered, noting inwardly that at least their banter wasn't any different than it had been in the past. Maybe the more things changed, the more they stayed the same, after all.

"You definitely haven't gained any wisdom if you're still resorting to petty insults based on my looks," sneered Opal, sticking her nose up in their air haughtily.

Before Owen could volley back, a quiet voice admonished from the corner, "You two are both fools indeed if you haven't learned how to be in the same room for one moment without quarreling like squirrels fight over an acorn. Truly, it's sometimes hard to believe that both of you are older than me when you behave so immaturely toward each other."

Glancing in the direction from which the voice had come, Owen spotted fifteen-year-old Olivia curled up in a lounge chair, her brown hair, as curly as Opal's, tamed into a neat bun. Her hazel eyes looked up from the novel she had been reading to fix on her siblings.

"It would also have been lovely if I had received a greeting from you, Owen, before you and Opal started grating away on each other's nerves," continued Olivia, tucking a ribbon into her book to mark her place, and putting the novel on a table beside her chair.

"I didn't see you there, Olivia," he told her, grinning at her as he walked over to her. When he reached her, she rose, and the two of them exchanged a brief hug that was nowhere near as wild as the one he had shared with Opal, since Olivia had always been reserved and more dignified than either of her siblings. As they released one another, he went on, "You know that you can't complain about people not noticing you when you make a habit of hiding in corners and blending into walls."

Before Olivia could respond to this, Owen looked around the parlor, and then said, "Well, unless I'm not seeing someone else concealed in a corner, it seems like Father didn't accompany you two here, after all. What a surprise."

"No, he didn't," admitted Opal, grasping his arm, tugging him onto a divan across from Olivia's chair, and sitting behind him. "When I wrote to you assuring you that he would be here, he had promised me that he would come with Olivia and me. I didn't lie to you. I just repeated what he had told me."

"I know you didn't lie to me," Owen informed her shortly. "I know it was him who lied to you as he always lies about every special time he's going to spend with any of us. The same thing happened when he swore that he would teach me how to ride a horse by himself when I was eight. The same thing occurred when Olivia was seven and he promised her that he would visit all the temples in the City of the Gods with her. The same thing happened the summer you turned nine, and he assured her that he would come to Corus with her to help her pick out some new gowns. The same thing happened every time we were all supposed to go on a ride or a picnic together. He would always make these pretty promises and then back out on them at the last minute."

"He means well," Olivia reminded him mildly.

"An apple probably also means well and would have done a better job of raising us," snorted Owen.

"You know you're exaggerating, Owen." Opal shook her head. "You know as well as I do that none of us wanted for toys, tutors, food, or clothing. We were given a good education. We got new toys and clothes whenever we asked for them. We never went to bed hungry even when we were naughty and probably should have been sent to bed without any supper. We were never beaten or anything. We can marry whoever we like. You must know that there are probably hundreds of children in the country who would die to have the upbringing that we did."

"Yes, I do know that," he sighed, remembering the ribs he had seen jutting out of the skinny frames of the refugee children he had encountered throughout the war with Scanra. "It's just that even the refugee children I saw had parents who cared about them, and even children of warriors always riding off into battle have more memories of time spent with their fathers than I do. When you realize that, it hurts, since you know that you were really raised as a well-cared-for orphan, because your father died the day your mother did."

"That's not true," insisted Opal vehemently, her amber eyes scorching Owen. "Father loves all three of us."

"Father loves his wine and the memory of our mother," he corrected her. "He doesn't love us. Actually, he doesn't even like us. He can't bear to meet my eyes because they are gray like our mother's were. He can't speak with you since you have the same lilting manner of talking as our mother did. He can't spend time with Olivia because her personality is the same as our mother's was."

"Father does love you, Owen." As she established as much, Olivia leaned forward to wrap her fingers around her brother's hand. "I think the reason that he can't bring himself to come to Corus for your Ordeal is because he's scared for you. Squires ha ve died in that Chamber, and he doesn't want to watch that happen to you. Everyone still remembers how distraught Lord Burchard of Stone Mountain and his wife were after their son Joren was killed in the Chamber."

Deciding that announcing that Joren had deserved his fate and that Tortall was greatly enriched by his death would be much too vindictive for devout Olivia to tolerate, Owen replied flatly, "If he thinks there is a chance that I'll die in the Chamber, he should be here for my last days, shouldn't he? I mean, it's not like he's busy fighting a war like Kel, Neal, Merric, Seaver, and Esmond are. He could be here if he wanted to be, but he doesn't wish to be, since he only cares about himself. If he really loved me at all, he'd be here with you two now."

"It's difficult to watch someone you love suffer, and it's hard to stay up all night, praying that they'll live to see the sunset the next day," murmured Olivia, her fingers squeezing his hand.

"Of course it's not easy to see someone you care about endure pain," Owen agreed. "If you love someone, though, you find the strength to stay beside them through the rough points, because you know that when they are suffering they need your support the most. It's cowardly to just abandon somebody you care about because you can't bear to see them in agony. You know that, Olivia. That's why you and Opal are here. That's why Margarry will be coming here before Midwinter. That's why Kel, Neal, Merric, Seaver, and Esmond would be here if their duty to the Crown didn't keep them up north for the winter."

"Not everyone can be as brave as you and your friends, Owen." Olivia smiled sadly. "Maybe you should pity those people who feel fear, rather than being angry at them."

"I feel fear," he answered, annoyed that somebody who had been familiar with him since childhood wouldn't have noticed this. "I'm terrified of dying before I can completely tap into my potential. I'm scared of losing those I love. I'm afraid of perishing or going insane during my Ordeal. I'm petrified that I won't be able to function alone as a knight. I just don't let my fear stop me from fighting for my country or standing beside people I care about when they need be to be there for them. There have been plenty of times when I've been scared and I wanted to take the easy way out, but my conscience has almost always managed to bully me into conquering my fear and doing what I believed was right at the time, even if it turned out to be wrong."

"Surely you must know how much strength it requires to overcome your own terror." Olivia's tone was soft. "Can't you find it in your heart to feel sympathy toward those of us who are weaker than you and can't achieve the same feat?"

"You don't lack strength." Owen stared at her. "If you did, you wouldn't be here. You'd be with Father, cowering in your chambers at Jesslaw."

"Oh, you don't know me half as well as you should, Owen, if you believe that." Her hazel eyes moist, Olivia shook her head. "I am so very weak. Every morning and evening, I have to get down on my knees to appeal to Mithros and the Goddess to provide me with the strength to have faith in them as I should, to love my family as I should, to be as devoted to my friends as I should be, to treat strangers how I would want to be treated, to perform my chores without complaint, and to resist any temptations that I should face during the day. Even when I do that, I know every day that I fall short of perfection. I recognize that every day there is at least one good deed I ought to have performed that I failed to do or one foul one that I shouldn't have even considered, nonetheless done. Normally, the number is far greater than that. Every time I pray, it is because I realize that I am weak and any strength I possess isn't my own. It is merely a gift from Mithros and the Goddess."

"You're wrong, Olivia," snapped Opal, who had enacted a policy of boycotting worship ever since their mother died. "All your strength to act virtuously and withstand evil emerges from within, not from some ethereal source. You only attribute your own goodness to deities because you are too humble to believe in your own moral fortitude."

"I'm afraid that it is you who are mistaken, Opal," responded Olivia, her back going as rigid as it always did when Opal brought up her refusal to pray or acknowledge the influence of the divine. "In this case, it is you who fail to comprehend that any strength that you believe you possess is nothing but a grace that the gods and goddesses continue, in their mercy, to bestow upon you, despite your stubborn insistence on turning away from their benevolence."

"We will never agree on this subject, I see, so let's ask the opinion of a third party." Here, Opal paused to skewer Owen with her eyes. Then, she ordered, "Tell us, Owen. Do you think that your strength comes from inside you or from gods and goddesses? Do you pray to Mithros before every battle, and praise him after every fight you win? Do you wake up and ask the Great Mother Goddess to protect you every day when you wake up, or do you rely on yourself to do that?"

"There have been times when times when I thought that the hand of Mithros or the Goddess was on my shoulder, shielding me from everything, but there have been other times when I felt completely alone in the world." Owen shrugged. "There have been times when I felt that either no gods or goddesses existed or else that they had abandoned us mortals, and there have been times when I was sure that they were carrying me. There have been times when I've prayed to the gods and goddesses in a crisis because I believed in them, and there have been other times when I was in trouble when I didn't ask for their help because I doubted that they would be able to hear my cries if they were even there to do so."

"Well, at least you pray, and at least you are somewhat aware of the need for the divine in your life," Olivia stated. "I'm truly convinced that if we open our hearts to the gods and goddesses that they will increase our faith. If we try to build a relationship with them, they will always attempt to cultivate our acquaintance more than we do theirs. That's why they even try to communicate with those, like Opal, who refuse to acknowledge them."

Before a scowling Opal could respond to this, Olivia added, "Anyway, Owen, to return to our initial topic of discussion, I understand completely why you would be disappointed, upset, and angry about Father not showing up for your Ordeal like he promised that he would."

"I'm not disappointed, because I knew he wouldn't be here, no matter what he said," Owen told her. "Nor am I upset, since all the people who genuinely care about me will be here for my Ordeal or else will have a legitimate reason not to be here. I am, however, angry, since the three of us had to grow up with a father who loved his wine far more than he loved us."

"Don't be bitter," implored Olivia. "Hatred is a slow-acting poison that destroys everything it makes contact with. Anyone who loathes others will one day find that his hatred will turn inward and eventually ruin him just as it has destroyed those he despised. That is why it is always better to forgive than to resent."

"I'll forgive him when he apologizes to us for not even really pretending to care about us," Owen declared, sticking out his chin.

"Knights are supposed to be merciful." Olivia tried again. "Besides, the gods and goddesses promise us that those who bestow mercy on their fellow beings will receive mercy from the Black God. Who hasn't sinned enough to need all the clemency they can get from the Black God?"

"I don't forgive myself for doing something seriously wrong unless I do something else to atone for my actions." Owen shrugged. "I don't see why the Black God should pardon me quicker and easier than I would absolve myself just because I forgave someone else without them even having to say they're sorry."

"Owen, do you remember when I was two, and I would slip into your bedroom crying many evenings because Father stopped saying good night to us?"Olivia said, her voice almost a whisper. "I didn't understand his new coldness toward us, and I needed someone to hug me. I craved reassurance that I was loved, and a nursemaid's arms around me wouldn't do, because a nursemaid wasn't family. Opal was only three, so I couldn't turn to her. I had to look to you, and you were always there for me. You were always willing to snuggle up against me, and when I asked where Mother had gone, you always assured me that she was in a better place. When I cried that I needed her, you said that as much as we all needed her, the Black God needed her more. When I complained about Father not saying good night to us or visiting the nursery to play with us anymore, you promised that he wouldn't always be like that. I don't think you even realize what you did for me then. I don't know if you understand that, even though you were just repeating the words of the priests and priestesses about Mother, I was able to be comforted by them when you said them and not when the priests and priestesses did. Even though I was little, I sensed that you were pained by Mother's death in a way that the priests and priestesses weren't, so I felt that if you believed that Mother really was in a better place then she must be, and if you were convinced that the Black God needed Mother more than we did, I figured that it must be true. When you promised me that Father wouldn't always be so distant, you sounded and appeared so certain that I accepted that, too. On those nights, you gave me faith and strength, because you believed."

"Mithros, Olivia, I didn't believe!" Owen burst out, more horrified than flattered. "I was just parroting the priests, priestesses, and nursemaids, because I didn't have a clue what else I was supposed to tell you when you were sobbing all over me. At that age, I barely understood death better than you did, and I didn't fully grasp that the Divine Realms was the better place they were all referring to. I couldn't have understood why the Black God would need our mother enough to have any real faith in what I was spouting to you."

"That doesn't matter." Olivia shook her head. "What was important was that you sounded confident. That's why, whenever I look back on those nights I spent crying in your room, I always have to admire your courage and acceptance, which, in the end, gave me the courage to accept Mother's death. Now, I think you need to find that same foundation of faith, strength, and bravery, and accept Father's behavior as you did back then."

"No, Olivia, it's you who need to accept that I was wrong." Owen's words came out more sharply than he had intended. "Father will never care about us. He will only ever love himself and his wine. I—I was lying when I told you that Father wouldn't always be so cold with us."

"You don't lie," whispered Olivia, looking hurt by his harsh tone.

"I wasn't lying on purpose." With difficulty, Owen swallowed the lump that had developed in his throat. "My heart really believed that Father would come back to us after he had recovered from his grief at Mother's passing, but I think that my mind always knew that he would never return to us any more than Mother would. Father will be a no good drunkard until the day he dies, and the sooner we accept that, the happier we'll all be."

"Father is not a drunkard!" Opal flared up. "You should cut out your own tongue before it says such things about your own father."

"Let's not lie to ourselves any longer, Opal," shouted Owen. "At last, let's be honest. Father is addicted to drinking. He can't go a day without getting completely intoxicated. He isn't content unless alcohol is in him, and he has no clue what's happening in the world outside his drunken stupor. If anyone else was that dependent on alcohol, we'd call him a drunkard. Why should we say he isn't just because he's our father?"

"How will calling our father a drunkard do us any good?" Opal snarled.

"It will help us understand that we didn't deserve being ignored," he retorted. "It will make us see that the way he treated us was his fault, not ours."

"You can't blame Father for what the wine makes him do," screamed Opal. "He doesn't have any control over what the drink does to him, and he needs the drink like a baby does a mother's milk."

"Oh, so you admit that he is a drunkard, then?" Owen arched an eyebrow at her.

"Fine, yes, Owen, Father is a drunkard, and may that unpleasant truth bring you much joy," snapped Opal. "Now, can't you see that since he's helpless when the drink is in him and he's helpless when it's not, he can't be held accountable for ignoring us or making us promises that he wouldn't ever keep?"

"I can hold him responsible, Opal, because he was always the one who chose to put the drink in him in the first place," snorted Owen. "Don't you see that Olivia should never have been forced to come to my room bawling when she was two because her own father couldn't be bothered with consoling her? Don't you realize how sick it is that I was the one drying her tears and trying to wipe away her fears after her mother died since her own father didn't have the guts to do that? Do you think it was easier for me to do that when I was five than it would have been for him to do when he was an adult? Don't you recognize how wrong it was that I didn't even understand death and I had to explain it to my two-year-old sister? Don't you reckon she should have gotten a better explanation of it from her own father? Don't you realize how horrible it was for him to absent himself from our lives when our mother had just died and we needed him all the more?"

Opal opened her mouth to volley back, but here Olivia intervened, "Owen, it was terrible that my own father didn't want to comfort me when Mother died, and it was unfair of you to be put in that position when you were only five and mourning Mother yourself. However, we've moved past that now, haven't we? Both of us have accepted Mother's death, even if there are times when we are reminded of her absence and it pains us a great deal. You and I, like Opal, were able to keep on living and loving after Mother died, because we were able to connect with each other. Father, who refused to make real contact with us, has never been capable of really living or loving since Mother died. Isn't that its own punishment? Why must you be so resentful of him when his ignoring us has wounded him more than it has us?"

Listening to Olivia, Owen had the epiphany that breaking free of the trap created by his father's indifference to him didn't just involve no longer torturing himself over earning his father's love. No, it went beyond that. It entailed not blaming the man for failing to be a real father. After all, as long as he resented his father, he couldn't be truly happy, and, as Olivia had pointed out earlier, bitterness was not something he wanted boiling in his heart. Sometimes it was better to forgive and to forget than to remember all the ways in which someone had wronged you.

"You're right, Olivia," agreed Owen after a moment. "Father's selfishness and inability to open his heart to us after Mother died have ultimately done more damage to him than to us, and the fact that he has to go through life alone is its own punishment."

As he made this concession, he could only marvel at how light and liberated he suddenly felt. His hatred and fury at his father were gone, dried up at the source, withered and lifeless. Now Owen realized that he had constructed at infinite cost to himself a useless line of bastions against an enemy—his father—that he imagined looming across the border, not understanding that, if the his foe attacked at all, his adversary wouldn't attack that way, and that his supposed enemy might not even really be his enemy at all. Now that he comprehended this at last, he could only regret the time and energy he had poured into resenting his father, and he could only wish that he had learned this lesson sooner.

"Well," he remarked, smiling ruefully as he remembered how he had bantered with Opal when he first arrived in the parlor, "I might not have gotten any wiser since you two saw me last, but you definitely have, Olivia."

"I am not wise," Olivia corrected him gently. "I have anguished for years over Father's treatment of us just as you have, Owen. I have blamed myself for not earning his love while at the same time struggling with my hatred and resentment of him for his horrid behavior toward us. You don't know how many hours I spent on my knees praying for guidance before I was blessed with the insight I just gave you, so, you see, I am not wise. It is the gods and goddesses who are wise."

"Thanks for sharing your revelation with me, then." Owen's smile widened as the grandfather clock on the far side of the room chimed eight.

"The gifts that the gods grant us, they give us to share." As she established as much, Olivia rose from her lounge chair. "I'm sorry to leave so abruptly, but I did promise Prosper of Tameran I'd join him in the portrait gallery in five minutes. I would have mentioned it earlier, but during the excitement of our discussion, I completely lost track of the time."

"How do you know Prosper of Tameran, and why are you meeting up with him?" demanded Owen, as Olivia rushed toward the door.

"I don't have time to answer any questions right now," Olivia answered, shutting the door behind her as she departed.

"How does she know Prosper, and why is she meeting up with him?" repeated Owen, focusing his attention on Opal, instead.

"She and Prosper met last Midwinter at a party at the Royal Palace, and they've been corresponding with each other regularly ever since," Opal explained. "As for why she's meeting up with him, the easy answer is because they are courting."

"I hope that one of Olivia's many prayers involved resisting Prosper's temptations," scowled Owen. "I can't believe that I was practicing archery with him yesterday, and he didn't tell me that he has been busy seducing my younger sister for a year."

"Why would he need to tell you that he is courting Olivia?" Opal raised a testy eyebrow. "In case it's slipped your mind, you aren't Olivia's father. Neither she nor Prosper require your permission or approval to court each other."

"Prosper is too old for Olivia." Owen folded his arms across his chest.

"Rubbish." Impatiently, Opal waved away this objection with a flick of her hand. "They are but three years apart, and Olivia is so serious that she acts much older than she is. I think, Owen, that you just want to be the only child in our family who is courting anyone."

"I should never have mentioned Margarry's name," grumbled Owen. "Now you'll never cease mocking me about her, will you?"

"Someone has to keep you humble, brother, and it might as well be me." Opal shrugged. "Anyway, I would have known about your relationship with Margarry even if you hadn't told me. Some of my friends from the convent were at the wedding ceremony for Prince Roald and Princess Shinkokami, and they spotted the two of you picnicking together quite frequently."

"We tried to find secluded locations to picnic in," mumbled Owen, his cheeks flaming as he recalled what he and Margarry had done during some of those picnics.

"You failed," Opal smirked. "Anyhow, I don't know Margarry of Cavall at all, because our fathers sent us to different convents to learn to be ladies. However, I have heard that she isn't beautiful or fashionable especially when compared to her older sister Karina. Nor is she skilled at tasks like sewing or cooking."

"She's gorgeous to me, and that's all that matters," Owen growled, his eyes ablaze. "I'm glad that she isn't good at needlework or cooking. If she were a proper lady, she'd bore me to pieces, and I'd want nothing to do with her, just as she'd wish to have no contact with me and my bad manners."

"No need to get so defensive." Opal wagged a reproachful finger under his nose. "Gossip is cruel to everyone, and I'm well aware that everybody calls me too outspoken and free-spirited, so who am I to condemn another young woman as unladylike?"

"Logic hasn't prevented you from being uncharitable in the past." Despite his hostile words, Owen could feel his hackles lowering.

"As I was going to say before I was so rudely interrupted by an ill-mannered squire," continued Opal, paying no mind to his latest comment, "I have also heard good things about Margarry of Cavall. Rather, they were all phrased as insults that managed to imply that if she didn't have a powerful father and a large dowry, Margarry would probably never find a man willing to marry her."

"I'd wed her in a heartbeat if her father would permit me," Owen asserted, his eyes narrowing. "I'm still waiting for you to say something nice about the woman I love."

"Rumor has it that she is a clever girl with a sharp tongue, a free spirit, and a stubborn streak." Opal's amber eyes gleamed as they fixed on Owen. "As a general rule, I applaud any young woman who hasn't got rocks rolling around in her skull, and I reckon that Margarry will need all the wits she has to compensate for your idiocy. Being somewhat sharp-tongued myself, I appreciate a lady who isn't afraid to speak her mind, and I think that you need someone who isn't going to be shy about scolding you. Any girl who wanted to survive living with you would need to be stubborn if she were to win any arguments at all with you. Since you are a wild man, anyone without a free spirit could never keep up with you. It wouldn't be fair for you to end up with a woman who would only hold you back, instead of pushing you forward. Perhaps I have never met this Margarry, but I believe that she is the right woman for you. She sounds like she knows how to prod you forward."

"She does," Owen laughed. When he sobered, he asked, "Opal, would you like to meet Margarry?"

"Yes, I would." She nodded. "Olivia would as well."

"Margarry and her mother will be arriving here two days before Midwinter. When I next write to her, I'll see how she feels about meeting you two. If she doesn't have a problem with it, I'm sure we can find some time over the holiday for all four of us to do something together."

"I'd like that." Opal grinned. "Speaking of Midwinter, brother, I have an early present for you."

"You do?" Owen eyed her dubiously.

"Yes, I do," confirmed Opal, reaching into her pocket and withdrawing a jewelry box.

"I don't wear jewelry," Owen announced the instant he saw the box.

"You won't be wearing this." Rolling her eyes, Opal opened the jewelry box to reveal a glittering golden ring with a sparkling diamond in the center of it. Gazing at it, Owen couldn't help but gasp.

"It's lovely," he murmured.

"It was Mother's," she whispered. "Father gave it to me as a Midwinter present before Olivia and I left for the Royal Palace, just as he gave Olivia Mother's old pearl prayer beads, which Olivia has been using a lot what with her frequent prayers that you and Prosper will emerge from your Ordeals alive and sane."

"I hope for the same thing." Even as he made this observation, Owen's mind was elsewhere. He was staring at the ring and imagining it encircling his mother's finger as she wore it to balls and parties.

"Me too." Opal nodded, and then switched the topic back to the ring. "Anyway, this was Father's engagement ring to Mother. He gave it to me, and now I am giving it to you."

"Don't be ridiculous," sputtered Owen. "I can't take the only thing you have of Mother's away from you, especially since I don't wear jewelry."

"It's an engagement ring," said Opal, her tone suggesting that she thought Owen wasn't spotting something obvious that was right under his nose. "That was its original purpose, and it should be its use still. Now, ladies never propose to men, and, anyway, I am not courting anyone at the moment. You, however, are a male who is courting a lady. Many young men decide to propose to their sweethearts after they complete their Ordeal of Knighthood, and I want you to have a ring ready should you choose to propose to Margarry."

"Thank you so much." Owen discovered that he was choking and couldn't speak anymore, so he decided to express his gratitude with a swift kiss on the cheek.

"There's no need to thank me." Opal's voice was brisk, but there were tears glistening in her eyes. "Just promise me, Owen, that when you use this ring to propose to Margarry, you'll make it a special proposal. Every girl dreams of the moment some man will ask for her hand, and I want Margarry's moment to be perfect."

"So do I." Owen nodded energetically. "I want every minute that she spends with me to be perfect, but, Opal, how do I make a proposal perfect?"

"I can't answer that," replied Opal dryly. "Every woman is different, and, therefore, the proposal every woman dreams of is unique. Just do something special that comes from the heart and reflects who you are and what your marriage together will be like. If Margarry loves you, she'll have to love a proposal that shows who you are."

"I'll keep that in mind." As he got to his feet, Owen filed this information away for later use once he passed his Ordeal. "Thanks for the ring and the advice, Opal. Since you've given me your present early, I guess I'll have to find one for you quickly."

"You will," Opal affirmed, as he made his way to the door. "After all, I am not a very patient girl, as you know. However, don't you dare sacrifice quality in your rush."

"I wouldn't when you gave me such a wonderful gift," he reassured her, shutting the door behind him. As he returned to his quarters, he imagined a million different scenes where he proposed to Margarry, and rehearsed in his head a hundred different ways of asking Wyldon's permission to propose to his daughter. Some of his ideas were good, some decent, some bizarre, and others completely dumb, but none of them were perfect. Fortunately, there was still time for him to hammer out the details of proposing to Margarry and attaining Wyldon's consent to do so in the first place.


	50. Chapter 50

The Last Day

"How does my hair look?" demanded Margarry anxiously on the first day of Midwinter, stopping in on of the hundreds of teeming corridors in the Royal Palace to wipe away the fog that had formed on one of the windows and frown at her reflection in the glass. "Never mind. Don't you dare answer that, Owen. It looks awful."

"It doesn't look awful," Owen reassured her, thinking that her hair resembled silk strands. "It's beautiful."

"You'd believe my hair was beautiful even if it was tangled and filled with debris," snorted Margarry.

"I'd be right."

"No, you wouldn't," Margarry countered briskly, as Owen watched her swipe away the mist that had been created on the pane due to her breathing. For another couple of seconds, she scowled while she examined herself before she muttered, "I can't fix my hair now, though. If I touch my hair with my gloves on, I'll just make it stand on end like a jester's."

"Perhaps we should move along, then," suggested Owen, grabbing her hand, and the two of them continued down the hallway toward the entrance hall where they would meet Opal and Olivia.

"I don't normally fret about such silly things as my personal appearance," remarked Margarry almost breathlessly. "It's just that I want to make a good first impression on your sisters."

"You don't need to worry about that," he soothed her, squeezing her gloved hand with his own and wishing that their flesh could touch instead of their wool.

"Of course I do," announced Margarry dourly. "What if they don't like me?"

"If they don't approve of you, I'll just love you all the more for that," he replied, grinning.

"Can't you be serious when I am tearing my hair out with fear?"' Margarry shot him a sour glare.

"I have to joke around when you are on the cusp of yanking all your beautiful hair out, because that's the only way to get you to calm down," he informed her, his smile still in place.

"Your jokes are far more likely to make me tug my hair out, since they are so lame," Margarry mumbled.

"It is only through jokes that I will force you to stop fretting over insignificant matters." Owen shrugged, ignoring Margarry's barb.

"Insignificant matters?" echoed Margarry incredulously. "It's very important what your sisters think of me. I don't want you to be torn between your love of them and your love of me the way that Father is ripped between his love of Mother and his love of his sister Elasabenne. I don't wish for the air to be thick with veiled insults whenever your sisters and I interact as it is when Mother and Aunt Elasabenne are compelled to make contact with each other. I don't desire you to be forever defending me from them and them from me. That's not fair to you at all. I could never forgive myself if I forced you to choose between my love and theirs."

"You wouldn't be forcing me to pick," he pointed out. "My sisters would be the ones doing so by refusing to accept you, and, if they won't open up to you, it's them that will lose my love, not you."

"You must not make such a statement," gasped Margarry. "Owen, if your sisters don't take a shine to me, I can hardly blame them for that, since I am not the proper lady that most girls hope their brothers will wed. If your sisters disapprove of me, it will be because they love you, have what they view as your best interests at heart, and believe that I am not good enough for you, just as Aunt Elasabenne doesn't feel that Mother is good enough for Father."

"Margarry, if my sisters love me, they will not hurt me by wounding you. If they care about me at all, they could never be cruel to you, because any injury done to you is done to me as well," Owen argued fervidly. "If they love me, they should respect my ability to select the woman with whom I want to spend the rest of my life."

He had hoped that this would be enough to placate Margarry, but she just sighed, "I hope that your sisters approve of me."

"Opal said that she thinks I need a smart, strong woman to keep me in line, and she heard that you had the perfect personality to do that, while Olivia is a non-judgmental person who likes practically everyone she meets and faults herself if she doesn't. Truthfully, I doubt that you have to worry about either of them disliking you." Owen tried another approach at comforting her. "Still, if the prospect of being introduced to them upsets you so much, I can go to them and tell them that you and I won't be meeting them after all. I'm sure they won't mind too much. When they learned that I would be the first one to undergo the Ordeal, Opal and Olivia offered to cancel the trip so you and I could spend the day before my Ordeal alone."

"No, don't do that." Grimly, Margarry shook her head, as they approached the entrance hall where they would unite with Opal and Olivia. "Truly, I do want to meet your sisters, even if I am nervous, since they are important to you and when you've met so many of my family members, it's only fair that I become acquainted with a few of yours. Besides, I did promise them through you that I would get together with them today. I was raised to believe that you should abide by your word, no matter how difficult it is to do so, unless unforeseen circumstances arise that render it impossible to do so. Needless to say, cold feet do not fall under that category. Anyway, even if I don't meet your sisters today, I will have to do so in the future, and there is no point in delaying the inevitable. Apart from that, I would feel terribly guilty if I stole your time with them away from you on the day of your Ordeal. They're your sisters, they've known you longer than I have, and, in their own manners, they love you as much as I do. They deserve to see you today, just as you deserve to see them. It would only create a rift between your sisters and me if I prevented them from being with you on such a crucial day. For that matter, if I committed such a crime, they would be perfectly justified in resenting me."

"How can you worry about them hating you when you display such concern for their feelings?" Owen asked.

"I worry because they are never going to find out that you even entertained the notion of spending all day with me without them," hissed Margarry, tugging him into the entrance hall where they would be joining Opal and Olivia. "Now, hurry up. Your sisters will never approve of me if I keep them waiting for eons."

"As if I were the one panicking in corridors," grumbled Owen under his breath, as he guided her to the pillar where his siblings, decked out in winter cloaks, scarves, gloves, and hats with stakes slung over their shoulders like Owen and Margarry, stood. Speaking at normal volume, he went on with the introductions, "Opal and Olivia, this is Margarry. Margarry, Olivia is the smaller one in the emerald cloak, and Opal is the uglier one in the scarlet cloak."

Before Opal, whose face was suddenly blazing as bright a crimson as her cloak, could retort, Olivia intervened.

"Margarry, Opal and I have been looking forward to making your acquaintance for quite awhile now," she said softly, her hazel eyes riveted on Margarry as she curtsied deeply. "It's a pleasure to meet you at last."

"Yes," Opal agreed, sweeping a deep curtsy, as well, while she locked her amber eyes on Margarry. "I confess that I have been puzzling over what type of woman would possess the resilience to deal with my brother's constant impertinence."

"A woman blinded by the power of her love of him." Owen could see the tension coiled inside Margarry when they strode into the entrance hall sailing out of her as she chuckled. Plainly, she was relieved to discover that Owen―rather than her― would be the target of Opal's mockery. Curtsying deeply but keeping her eyes fixated on Owen's sisters, she stated, "It is an honor to meet you both."

"I myself am delighted that you could all get together to taunt me on what could be my last day alive," grunted Owen, half-annoyed by the pleasantries that had lasted longer than he cared for, and half-vexed by their teasing.

If he was aiming to restore their attention to him, he couldn't have concocted a better fashion in which to do so, for all three of his companions answered at once.

"You aren't going to die any time soon," crooned Olivia. "Have more faith in yourself and in the gods."

"I wouldn't have mocked you if you hadn't teased me first," Opal volleyed back.

"You should be happy that your sisters and I are bonding," Margarry reasoned, as the four of them exited the entrance hall and descended the stairs to the palace grounds.

"I would be pleased if the bonding didn't entail tormenting me," he observed irascibly while they proceeded down the icy path to the gate that fed onto a lane that led into the throbbing heart of Corus.

"Such a remark clearly reveals your ignorance of female behavior," snickered Opal.

"All I need to know about women is that they don't act sensibly." Owen shrugged. "Anything else is merely confusing, extraneous details."

"Well, an interesting extraneous detail is the fact that ladies bond by ripping themselves and others to pieces with words just as gentlemen bond by beating each other up on the practice courts," Margarry educated him sardonically, rolling her eyes at his idiocy.

"How do you have the gumption to accuse men of being brutes when you're just as savage?" demanded Owen indignantly. While they passed the sentries guarding the gate and started down the snowy lane that led to Corus, he burst out, "No, you are more vicious than us. At least men fight one another openly with real blows rather than with indirect gossip assaults."

"That's why women are more refined than men," smirked Margarry. "Where you do battle with your muscles, we fight with our wits and our charm."

"Whatever you claim, I'd rather have a plain enemy than a false friend." Stubbornly, Owen shook his head. "A smack across the face stings, but a fake smile hurts more in the long run."

"Of course it does," confirmed Margarry, nodding as though this statement did not in any way contradict her previous assertions. "However, what might appear to a man to be a false friend will seem to a woman to be an open adversary. What a male would regard as a fake smile would be the equivalent of a slap across the face to a female. What a man would see as a veiled insult a woman would perceive as an obvious one. Simply put, ladies communicate on a level that gentlemen have no hope of comprehending."

"For example, when Opal and I first laid eyes on Margarry, we were evaluating her." Olivia inserted herself into the exchange, as they arrived on a thronging city street. All around them, the thoroughfare was congested with people rushing on foot, on horseback, or on wagon to visit friends and family for the holiday. Suddenly, the odors of the city―sweat, unwashed human, and waste accumulating along the sides of the road―flooded Owen's nostrils just as the shouts of vendors screaming that their wares were a bargain and their competitors' products were ludicrously overpriced as they shoved their goods under the noses of the passerby deluged his ears. As they passed the food stalls, the aromas wafted toward them, and, although he had eaten breakfast prior to collecting Margarry from her chambers, Owen's stomach growled. Squashing the hunger that abruptly flared in him, he strove to ignore the meat sizzling over fires and the treats dangling from slender poles at every food cart, tantalizing him. "We were searching for signs that she cared for you as you cared for her, and, when we saw how you two fit together and whispered with each other as you crossed the hall, we knew that she loved you as much as you did her. When we recognized that, we made an effort to greet her with extra warmth by curtsying more deeply than etiquette strictly required and making eye contact with her to indicate that our words weren't just meaningless manners. When she returned the gaze and the deep curtsy, she accepted our offer of friendship."

"I thought you were just exchanging pointless pleasantries." Owen whistled in amazement.

"Normally, we would have been, but the glances we swapped changed everything," responded Margarry.

Owen couldn't help but smile as he realized just how much bonding his sisters and Margarry had managed to achieve in a handful of polite sentences. However, it rapidly faded when they arrived at the frozen Olorun River, and he spotted what was transpiring on it.

Toddlers stumbled around on the ice, or wailed on their bottoms if they had already slipped. Shrieking children raced one another across the width of the solid waterway. Young men and women were spinning around as though dancing. Older men were punching holes in the ice and dropping in lines, hoping to catch fish, while older women were gossiping with their babies on their hips. There were even carts selling drinks and snacks stationed on the frozen river.

Absorbing this scene made Owen think of his friends along the Scanran border who would no doubt deem it as cause enough for jubilation if the mess hall served slightly higher quality meat during Midwinter as well as all the soldiers he had ever been familiar with who hadn't lived to welcome in this new year. As the faces of Quinton, Seth, Lofren, and even Walden rose in his mind, he halted, folding his arms over his chest.

"What's wrong, Owen?" Olivia wanted to know, her eyes concerned.

Before Owen could answer, Margarry clasped his shoulder and said, "I know it's difficult, but try not to fret about the Ordeal. Worrying about it won't do you any good and will just spoil your day."

"I wish the queen hadn't drawn your name first." Opal sighed. "We could have spent more of Midwinter together before you had to undergo your Ordeal if you hadn't been picked to go first."

"I don't mind going first." Owen shook his head. "In fact, the sooner I go, the better it will probably be. I prefer to charge into things before I can recognize just how terrified I should be. The more time I have to think about my Ordeal, the worse it will be. Trust me, the vigil itself will be torture enough. Anyway, it wasn't the Ordeal that made me freeze."

"What was it?" prodded Olivia gently.

"It's just as if here the war simply doesn't_ exist_," faltered Owen. "All these individuals just skate, eat, fish, and gossip as though people weren't shuddering along the Scanran border to protect them. It's as if they aren't even aware of all the people who have fought and died for their sake, and all those who will do so in the future."

"Father says it's hard to get accustomed to life away from the battlefront once you've adapted to life on it," Margarry commented.

"I don't want to get used to life away from the battlefield." Owen's eyes narrowed. "I want to bash their stupid heads together and yell at them to wake up already."

"Isn't this what you're fighting for, though?" Margarry waved a hand at the hordes of beings skating, laughing, shouting, and gossiping on the ice, safe from the Scanrans and any fear of attack because people they had never known and had never cared to consider had perished to keep them so. "Aren't you waging war against the Scanrans so that they will never have to experience the terror of violence?"

"I know." Exhaling gustily, Owen rubbed his forehead. "I just can't help but wonder if it ever occurs to them that right now there are people fighting and dying for their sake. I can't stop asking myself if they even comprehend how much blood has been shed to shield them."

"They probably don't," murmured Olivia. "I think that they would have to have experienced warfare themselves before they can fully appreciate being rescued from it. Those of us who haven't been to war can't really understand how horrible it is. As long as we are protected from war, we can't comprehend completely just what we are saved from, and can't be as grateful as we should be."

"Is that what you want, anyway, Owen―to be burdened with gratitude?" pressed Margarry.

Burdened with gratitude. He had never perceived it in that fashion, although Kel or Wyldon probably would have. In fact, it most likely would never have entered either of their heads that they deserved to be thanked for all they had sacrificed for their realm. Both of them probably spent most of their lives telling themselves that the service that they had provided their country with wasn't good enough, and that they should have given more.

"I don't―I guess―maybe―-perhaps a thank you once in a while would be nice," he stammered, his cheeks burning.

"Is that why you want to be a knight―to be thanked?" demanded Margarry sharply, her arms crossed over her chest.

"No!" protested Owen vehemently, glaring at her, because he was miffed that she would believe him to be such a selfish egotist. "I want to become a knight so I can defend people. I wish to be a knight because I couldn't be anything else."

"Good answer." Margarry's tone didn't soften. "Knights don't receive much gratitude, Owen. They get muddy and cold serving others, and nobody thanks them for that. They fight and die for people who all too often seem indifferent to their sacrifice. They protect beings too weak to even notice they were in danger, nonetheless to appreciate a rescue. They pour their sweat and blood into defending others and are seldom applauded for it. They have to leave their wives and children for months at a time so other families may remain intact. They have to put strangers first and themselves last always. All they get in return is the satisfaction of knowing that they have done their duty and that they have prevented others from enduring the sort of agony that they have."

Gaping at her, Owen muttered, "How could the best lecture I ever had on chivalry come out of the mouth of someone who was never even a page?"

"I've watched Father ride off to do his duty ever since I was knee high to a grasshopper," Margarry reminded him. "For years, I'd ask myself why he would leave his family if he loved us so much. It took me awhile to realize that he loved others more than himself, which is why he was always riding off even if he would have been happier at home in Cavall."

"I understand putting others before yourself, because I try to do that all the time, but still…" Owen trailed off as he gazed at the oblivious, ignorant masses.

"Still, it's hard to watch people take for granted all that's been done for them," finished Margarry, clucking her tongue sympathetically. "It's difficult to see how selfish and thoughtless they can be. It's sickening to witness them prove repeatedly that they care about nothing and nobody save themselves. It's disgusting to know that the instant anything goes awry, they'll be begging knights, Riders, and the Own for aid, but what can you do? Knights, Riders, and the Own are the realm's heroes. It's their job to fight battles no one else is going to and to serve fully aware that they will be never be rewarded as they deserve to be."

"It's more than a job," Owen told her. "It's a sacred calling."

"A sacred calling," repeated Margarry, beaming. "Yes, that sounds right. Now, I'm experiencing a sacred calling to go staking, and you are going to join your sisters and me in doing so, because you are not at war at the moment, and you are going to enjoy your last day as a squire."

With that, Margarry plopped on a log and began replacing her shoes with her skates. Opal and Olivia settled down beside her and started switching their shoes for their skates as well. Figuring that he was allowed to enjoy the day before his Ordeal without being disloyal to his friends along the border, Owen sat down and did the same.

Once they had all tied their laces, they stumbled out onto the ice. The second they wobbled onto the frozen river, they were speeding off, the blustering wind turning their noses as pink as their lips and blowing their laughter back into their faces. As they glided along, they tagged and raced each other.

Then, before Owen knew it, the crowds were mostly behind them, although the four of them could hear the gasps of the people to their rear when the sun briefly speared through the pewter gray sky, diamonding the landscape.

Unfortunately, the sun seemed to decide that was too much splendor, for it hastened to burrow itself between blankets of cloud once more. It was now early afternoon, but it felt as cold as dusk. To warm themselves, they skated back down the river to purchase roasted chestnuts, sweet Midwinter buns, and some sort of green tea that was apparently popular in Corus now that Princess Shinkokami had introduced it. They gobbled up their meal on a log beside the river, and then returned to the ice.

After that, though, Owen couldn't regain the carefree bliss that had filled him when he was skating with his sisters and Margarry earlier. Thoughts of his impending Ordeal kept intruding on any peace of mind he might have succeeded in building. Even as he tried to laugh and play around with Opal, Olivia, and Margarry as he had before he had eaten, he sensed that it was obvious that his heart wasn't in it, because his mind was too busy wondering what horrors the Chamber had in store for him, and if this really would be his last day alive.

Despite the fact that he continued to remind himself that if today was his last day, he should enjoy it, he couldn't relax. As a result, he was somewhat relieved when the afternoon drew to a close, and they got off the ice. At least he was nearing the time when he would actually have to undergo the Ordeal instead of just fretting about it, he noted inwardly, wishing he could come up with something more reassuring to buoy himself with as he replaced his skates with his shoes for the journey up to the Royal Palace, which turned out to be far more silent than the trip down to Corus.

When they arrived at the palace, Opal, Olivia, and Margarry returned with Owen to his room so that he could fetch the white garments he was supposed to change into after the ritual bath. There was no real need for the three girls to accompany him back to his room, but he was grateful for their company anyway. Even if they weren't saying anything to him, their presence was a balm to at least some of his anxiety. He hated being alone, and he would be spending enough time by himself tonight without starting early.

As they left his room, Opal launched herself at Owen, flinging her arms about him and clinging onto him as though she never planned to release him. She rested her cheek against his, and he could feel how chilled it was from the wintry weather. After a lengthy, crushing embrace, she pulled back, warning him, "Don't you dare die on me, brother. I don't want to be an heiress. Then I'll never be free of foppish suitors vying for my hand."

Once Opal bustled off in the direction of her chambers, as though she couldn't bear to look at Owen for a moment longer for fear that she would cry, Olivia advanced. She hugged her brother, and, as she rested her head against his chest, she advised him, "Mithros and the Goddess will never abandon us, Owen. Any time we pray to them in our heads or our hearts, they will hear us and help us. No matter what, we can have faith that Mithros will protect us because he is the noblest warrior of all, and that the Goddess will care for us because we are all her children." With a light kiss on his cheek, she drew away from him, leaving him with a final reassurance. "I'll be praying for you all night in the Goddess' chapel."

Before Owen could respond through his dry mouth, Olivia had disappeared, heading off in the direction of the Goddess' chapel.

Now that his sisters were gone, Owen wrapped his arms around Margarry and brought his lips to hers, kissing her with more passion that he had ever displayed before, since if he was going to die, he needed to do so still remembering the texture of her lips against his. He could sense an identical frantic desire in her as she opened her mouth so that their tongues could slide against each other. His hands, outside of his control and desperate to memorize every inch of her, ran along her body, and his chest burned through his shirt where she stroked it.

"Whatever happens, I'll remember that," Margarry gasped when they separated after a moment that felt far too short for Owen.

"If I die," Owen began, biting his lip hard enough to draw blood, but she interrupted him.

"You're not going to die," she hissed. "You're going to live long enough to get married and have children, because if you don't, I will commit suicide just so I can hunt you down in the afterlife and kill you a second time."

"I'd better not die, then, because I don't want your suicide on my conscience, but, seriously, if I do die, Margarry, forget about me." He swallowed the lump that welled in his throat and blinked furiously to clear his blurred vision. "Marry someone else and have babies with them. Move on and find happiness without me."

"I could never dishonor you in such a manner!" Margarry exclaimed, affronted and aghast. "I love you, and I could never be with anyone else. If you died, I could never forget about you even if I went senile. You'll always be with me like a handprint on my heart."

"And I love you," Owen replied heavily. "I love you more than life itself, and that's why I'd want you to move onto find joy with someone else if I died. I wouldn't want you thinking about me if that caused you anguish. It would be best for you if you loved me while I was alive, and forgot about me after I died."

"I love you, and I would do anything for you, but I couldn't bully my heart into forgetting you." Fervently, Margarry shook her head. "Now, you have to go prepare for your Ordeal, and I have to go join your sister in that chapel to the Goddess, so you can know that I'll be on my knees praying for you until dawn. You won't be keeping vigil alone tonight. I'll never leave you alone. Even if you can't see or hear me, I'll be there."

"I'll always be there for you, too," Owen vowed, his voice husky. Then, before he could surrender to the temptation to kiss her again, he hurried off to the room next to the royal chapel dedicated to Mithros, where he would take the ritual bath while receiving a final instruction on the Code of Chivalry before he underwent the vigil and the Ordeal.


	51. Chapter 51

Ordeal

"Owen of Jesslaw, are you prepared to be instructed?" asked Lord Matthias of Nond formally once Owen had joined Matthias and Wyldon in the chamber adjoining the chapel and had thanked Matthias for honoring him.

"I am." Owen nodded firmly, wishing that he could make his tone as steady. Still, he noted glumly to himself, at least he had bullied his clenched jaw into moving at all and had unglued his tongue from the roof of his mouth long enough to speak. Besides, his voice had been quite unwavering when he took into account that he was lying; the truth was that he wasn't prepared to be instructed any more than the average court jester was ready to become king of Tortall.

When it came down to it, Owen wasn't prepared for his vigil or his Ordeal either. All he was ready to do was run, but he couldn't do that. It would be cowardly to flee now, and, if he did, he would disgrace his sisters, Margarry, his friends, and Wyldon. He would die before he did that.

On second thought, he might not even be capable of running away from the start of this living nightmare at all, since his legs and feet suddenly seemed to have been replaced with ice.

His fingers numb, Owen began to undress himself. As the cold air bit into his newly exposed body parts, he resisted the temptation to curse, gasp, shudder, or offer any other sign of how the chill impacted him, because weakness wasn't something he wanted to display before his Ordeal. Trying to comfort himself by reasoning that if the bath water wasn't frozen, then the room must not be too cold, he finished removing his clothing. Then, still feeling as though his body was ice, he hurried into the water, which he hoped would warm him up slightly.

Unfortunately, he discovered that the water was, if anything, a lower temperature than the chamber that encircled it. Grinding his teeth, he inwardly cursed the ancestors that had decided that Midwinter as opposed to Midsummer was the appropriate time for knighting people. Of course, knighting people in Midwinter wouldn't have been such an awful idea in itself if this wretched bath hadn't been incorporated into the ritual.

He was well aware that Olivia, as well as any priest or priestess worth their salt would have told him that water was a traditional purifying element intended to wash away his sins before he entered the Chamber of the Ordeal. Personally, he didn't think that the ritual bath would be able to cleanse him of his wrongdoings. Betraying your country, not noticing that a supposed friend guilty of sabotage and espionage until it was too late, and killing people without a pause in battle weren't the sort of things water could wipe away. Sure, water could erase the physical evidence of dirt and bloodshed, but it could not purge the internal proof of guilt. Just trying to brush off his crimes with water and soap made his sins more visible, since the outer cleanliness was only a poor lie to conceal his inner ugliness.

"If you survive the Ordeal of Knighthood, you will be a Knight of the Realm," Lord Wyldon said, continuing the traditional instruction.

Scrubbing his arms with such force that he was surprised his skin wasn't lobbed off, Owen thought that if he failed his Ordeal, he would be dead or insane. The instruction aspect of the rite didn't mention that minor detail, though. All it focused on were the consequences of success, rather than failure, even though the Ordeal was a brutal test designed to break squires, not pass them.

Of course, maybe little could be said about failing the Ordeal except that the terrors inflicted by the Chamber coupled with the ignominy of failing to become a knight often led those who weren't killed in the Ordeal and failed to pass it to commit suicide at some point afterward. All too often it turned out that a squire unworthy of being a knight would decide for himself that he was unfit to live if the Chamber did not make that choice for him….

If Owen failed the Ordeal but survived, what would he do? Ever since he could remember, he had dreamed of being a knight so that he could protect others from bandits, and, once he had met Kel, his drive to serve and defend people had only increased. Even as the years passed and he realized not only how hard it was to achieve his goal of knighthood but also how difficult it was to be a good knight, he still couldn't imagine any other lifestyle.

After all, when he had committed treason by following Kel to Scanra, despite the fact that he had believed he was sacrificing his dream of becoming a knight for the sake of her and her refugees, he had envisioned that he would be executed as a result, and that would render any concern about a different future career futile. Yet, if he couldn't become a knight due to failing his Ordeal, he would have to figure out what to do when he had disgraced his family and friends, humiliated himself, and broken his life dream forever. Under the circumstances, suicide would be pretty appealing…but suicide wouldn't help anyone.

No, as long as he emerged from the Chamber capable of recalling his own name, he would find a manner to serve others. Even if he couldn't become a knight, he could still act like one by aiding by the Code of Chivalry. He had to focus on things he could control like his own behavior, or else he would go mad before his Ordeal even commenced.

"You will be sworn to protect those weaker than you," Wyldon continued from what sounded like a league away, and, abruptly, Owen remembered the emaciated refugees he had rescued in Scanra. He recalled with searing clarity the scars on their bodies and the lash marks marring their backs. Rescuing them was protecting them. Seeing the corpses scattered throughout Giantkiller and Haven was what it meant to be too late to protect them. Refugee bodies hanging from creaky tree limbs for daring to rebel against their Scanran captors were the very definition of failing to shield others, and the stench of failure would haunt Owen forever.

Wishing that the smell of rotting flesh hadn't replaced the aroma of soap flooding his nostrils, he rubbed at his legs and feet. As he washed himself, bubbles popped around him, and every pop represented to him another life he had been too late or too weak to save.

Pop-pop. Two more bubbles died before he could even recognize their existence. Pop-pop. Another two died, and who could count the casualties? Who would even want to, anyway? Who could bear to count nameless victims when the numbering alone might break a heart?

"To obey your overlord―" Wyldon's voice was just audible over the perishing soap bubbles.

Owen knew he had already fallen short of that target by a considerable margin. Scrubbing his chest, he didn't have to think very hard to recollect all the times he had argued with or disobeyed his knightmaster. Even without taking into account his abandoning Lord Wyldon during the whole Scanran adventure, it was obvious that obedience was no more his strong suit than algebra was a fly's. If he couldn't even obey a stern commander whom he respected and loved like a father, how could he ever hope to answer properly to anyone else? Perhaps he really wasn't cut out for this knighthood thing, after all.

"And to live in a way that honors your kingdom and your gods," Wyldon went on, and Owen thought he could handle that. While he wasn't devout by any stretch of the imagination, he did strive to follow the moral guidelines outlined by the gods, and, for the most part, he did the best he could to serve his country.

"To wear the shield of a knight is an important thing," Matthias stepped in again. "It means you may not ignore a cry for help. It means that rich and poor, young and old, male and female may look to you for rescue, and you cannot deny them."

Cleaning his face, Owen thought that there would never be a time when he would ever even contemplate ignoring a plea for help. Even if he couldn't save the person, he would do everything in his power to try to rescue them. As a page, he couldn't turn a blind eye to the hazing, and, as a squire, he couldn't ignore the suffering of the refugees. If he was a knight, he wasn't going to start pretending he didn't hear the cries of people in pain or didn't see the silent imploring for salvation in their eyes.

After all, he had longed to become a knight in the first place so he could defend beings from bandits. Now that desire had only expanded so that he needed to protect all innocent people from anyone who would harm them, whether the attackers were outlaws or Scanran soldiers.

"You are bound to uphold the law," Wyldon informed him, and Owen's stomach twisted as he pondered how exactly he could do so when he was guilty of commuting treason himself. "You may not look away from wrongdoing."

Scrubbing at his hair, Owen felt the knot in his stomach tighten, because Wyldon had looked away from wrongdoing when he hadn't charged Kel and those who followed her to Scanra with treason. If Wyldon couldn't be a perfect knight, what hope did Owen have?

"You may not help anyone to break the law of the land, and you must prevent the breaking of the law at all times, in all cases." Wyldon was still talking, and Owen's stomach was still knotting, since he had already failed dismally at that when he essentially permitted Walden to violate the laws of the realm by paying no mind to the man's suspicious behavior.

"You are bound to your honor and your word," said Matthias.

Squeezing his eyes closed and dunking his head underwater to remove the suds, Owen observed to himself that, despite his best efforts at being honest, he had already lied more often in his life than he had ever wished to do. How could his word mean anything when he had already broken it in the past?

As he emerged from the water, Owen heard Matthias remind him, "Act in such a way that when you face the Black God, you need not be ashamed."

Gulping, Owen prayed that he wouldn't be meeting the Black God any time soon. He wasn't ready to die yet. He was young, and he had too much left to accomplish.

"You have learned the laws of Chivalry," concluded Wyldon, as Owen climbed out of the bath, discovered that the room felt ten times icier now that he was wet, and swiftly wrapped himself in a towel. Hurriedly, eager to get himself as dry as possible as rapidly as he could, he wiped all the water he could off his skin and hair. "Keep them in your heart. Use them as guides when things are their darkest. They will not fail you if you interpret them with humanity and kindness. A knight is gentle. A knight's first duty is to understand."

Slipping into the simple white cotton garments he would wear throughout his vigil and Ordeal, Owen absorbed every word. The advice might have been nothing more than the last lines of an ancient script that had been reenacted millions of times before and that would be repeated millions of times in the future, but every word was still more valuable than a gem. Every word had done its part in allowing generations of squires to pass their Ordeals. If the words had helped so many squires in the past, they had the power to assist him in surviving his vigil and Ordeal as long as he listened to them and did not forget them.

Once Wyldon was done speaking and Owen was finished donning his clothing, they stared at each other for a long moment in which Owen discovered that he couldn't breathe. He wanted very much to thank his knightmaster for all the time and energy the man had invested in his training, but his mouth wasn't cooperating with him. Instead, it remained silent as Wyldon's piercing eyes examined him from head to toe. Swallowing, he suspected that his knightmaster detected at least a dozen major flaws in him. Suddenly, he felt more naked than he had before he was dressed.

Out of the corner of his eye, Owen noticed that Matthias had drifted back and was carefully studying a tile on the wall as though it were the most fascinating object he had ever encountered. With a jolt, Owen realized that Matthias was providing them with as much privacy as possible for a final farewell before Owen underwent his vigil and Ordeal.

Personally, Owen doubted that they required any privacy. After all, his tongue and the rest of his body were frozen, so there was nothing he could say or do to remind Wyldon of how much the man meant to him. As for Wyldon, he refrained from demonstrating any true affection for his squire in public, and Owen was willing to bet that even the presences of one close friend changed the scene from a private one to a public one.

However, he was proven wrong in this assessment when, after a lengthy pause, Wyldon grunted, "Come here."

Before Owen could even think about moving to comply, Wyldon's arms had snaked around his shoulders. The next second, he found himself pressed against his knightmaster's chest. For a few seconds, Wyldon hugged him, and he took comfort from the embrace. He could feel the solid muscle coiled in his knightmaster's arms and chest, and he knew that his indomitable man had trained him to be strong―not weak. Long after most individuals would have surrendered, he would keep fighting not just because it was what Wyldon expected of him, but, more importantly, it was what he demanded of himself.

After a few seconds, which staved off his impending vigil for far too short an interval, Wyldon released him. Once he had shoved Owen away, Wyldon rested his right hand on Owen's head with his fingers splayed. As it occurred to him that this gesture was a customary benediction usually employed by parents upon their children, Owen's eyes widened.

He barely had time to recover from his astonishment that Wyldon would essentially admit in front of anyone that he perceived him as a son before Wyldon had murmured, "Gods all bless you, Owen."

The last word had only just left his lips when Wyldon withdrew his palm from Owen's head, and he regained the brusque fashion he issued practically all of his orders in as he announced, "You must not make any sound between now and the time you leave the Chamber of the Ordeal."

Numbly, Owen nodded, acknowledging something that he had known ever since he was a page, while Wyldon opened the door to the chapel. Immediately, wintry air swept over Owen's skin, easily permeating the light cotton breeches and shirt.

Acutely aware of ever drop of water that he hadn't managed to dry off himself, Owen took a deep breath to fortify himself and then walked as steadily as he could into the frigid chapel. Following the scant illumination cast by the lone candle flickering behind the altar, he sat down on the bench positioned in front of the Chamber of the Ordeal.

Now that he was stationary, he was even colder, and he mentally cursed his thin, white clothes. White was such a stupid color, anyway. It was supposed to represent purity, and that made a mockery of everything he had experienced since he became a squire. After all, he would not classify himself as pure. Anyone who had lied, had killed, had seen starving refugees, had watched friends get slain in battle, had witnessed the devastation of two forts raided by Scanrans, had committed treason, had spat on the corpses of Blayce and Stenmun, and had plunged his dagger into the heart of a false friend could not be regarded as pure. Then again, no squire was an innocent when he endured this awful vigil just as few brides were virgins when they glided down the aisle in their ethereal white gowns.

Of course, the white cotton garments were probably meant to torment would-be-knights just as everything about the Ordeal was. Every element leading up to the Ordeal was designed to shatter squires. That was why they had to bathe―not for a symbolic cleansing, but rather to guarantee that they would spend the night shivering in the icy chapel. The thin clothes were devised to afford a body no protection against the chill that was all the more vicious when one was wet.

Supposedly, the vigil was an opportunity for a squire to gain strength from reflecting upon why he wanted to be a knight in the first place and what the Code of Chivalry meant to him. However, he was convinced that it was really nothing more than a chance for a squire to envision all the tortures the Chamber would be heaping upon him at dawn. The proof of this theory was in the fact that the bench was stationed right in front of the entrance to the Chamber.

The truth was that the vigil was intended to ensure that every squire who entered the Chamber for his Ordeal was battered both physically and mentally. Once the squire was suitably weakened, the Chamber provided the final pounding, which was so terrible that no knight was allowed to reveal what had transpired during his Ordeal.

Thinking of his imminent Ordeal, Owen bit his lip so hard that it spewed blood into his dry mouth, and, for the hundredth time, he wished that he didn't have to remain quiet during his Ordeal. There was a consolation in knowing that he could scream to buoy himself during a battle, curse when he was in agony, mutter when he was annoyed, and shout when he was outraged by a cruelty or injustice. Now, that comfort of expression was to be denied him during what he already recognized would be one of the most traumatizing experiences of his entire existence…

His heart racing, he wished that he wasn't alone. He yearned for someone to be beside him as he prepared for the most difficult struggle of his life.

_Stop this whimpering_, snapped the part of himself that had been around Lord Wyldon too long_. Knights don't whine even to themselves, and there's no profit in complaining about things you can't do anything about. That which you cannot change, you must endure, so you can end your fussing now. _

For some reason, this last thought prompted him to fix his gaze on the golden disk depicting the sun behind the altar. This symbol of Mithros caused shame to swamp Owen. Truly, he was weak and selfish to complain to himself about all the suffering he was going through when Mithros daily went to battle with the forces of darkness to rise, and, every year, after the longest night, he resurrected himself so that mortals would not freeze and would be able to grow crops. Mithros, whom all the priests insisted was sinless, sacrificed himself every day for mortals not because humans had done anything to merit such a gift, but because Mithros loved people despite their flaws.

_Mithros_, Owen prayed, hoping that, as Olivia believed, symbols of the divine did indeed make present in a more concentrated form the deities they represented. _Please help me find the courage and resilience to do my duty as selflessly as you do_.

Duty. He remembered as vividly as though it had happened yesterday Wyldon telling him that all moral complexities in the Code of Chivalry could be reduced to the simple, overarching principle of duty. He recalled how Wyldon had informed him that duty to oneself entailed acting with integrity, speaking the truth, and fighting bravely. He recollected Wyldon explained to him that duty to those close to you involved respecting your parents, treating your spouse with civility and gentleness, teaching your children, and defending your family and those dear enough to feel like it. He remembered Wyldon saying that duty to your country obliged you to work hard, obey your superiors, and protect the rest of your people at all costs.

Wyldon had told him that duty to those close to you outweighed duty to yourself, and that duty to your country outweighed duty to yourself. Owen had accepted that duty to those close to you mattered more than duty to yourself, which was why he had been willing to sacrifice his reputation and his dreams in order to join Kel in Scanra.

Yet, he had never truly been comfortable with the notion that duty to your country was more important than duty to those close to you. There would always be a part of him that would value the life of a friend or family member more than he would the life of a stranger.

Reflecting on duty, Owen recalled that when he had first started out as a page, he had regarded duty as a dull, almost worthless, word. At the beginning of his training to be a knight, he had perceived duty as morally meaningless, since the actions performed in its name may or may not have coincided with genuine inner concern, which meant that, to him, duty had amounted to little more than mere show.

After seeing the emphasis that Kel and Wyldon had placed upon duty, he had been compelled to modify his stance. Over time, he had come to understand that the ideal knight performed every duty with sincere good will, so that every benevolent behavior sprang from benevolence. Besides, over the years, he had learned that even when the ideal inner condition hadn't been attained, society as a whole still benefited whenever an individual did his duty, and it was possible that habitual performance of duty would create that ideal inner state.

Now, musing in the chapel, Owen revised his opinion of duty again. Duty, he concluded, was really nothing more than love masquerading under another name. Reduced to its most basic tenets, duty required that he strive to love strangers as he loved those most dear to him, and that he love those most dear to him more than he loved himself.

When he loved Margarry, he could never treat her with anything less than tenderness, respect, and devotion. Certainly, he could never injure her without wounding himself in the process.

When he loved his friends, he would defend them to the death, since their lives amounted to far more in his eyes than his own did. He would definitely never be able to betray them by word or deed when he knew that doing so was the equivalent of stabbing them in the heart with a sword.

When he loved others, it was only natural that he would want to serve them and protect them to the best of his abilities. When he loved others, it made perfect sense for him to treat people fairly and to be angered when beings neglected to act justly toward one another. When he loved others, he would never wish to let them down by breaking his word, and he certainly would never desire to rob them of their right to the truth by lying. When he loved others, he couldn't prevent himself from caring for the sick and the injured however he could even though he wasn't a healer. When he loved others, he would always try to boost the morale of anyone who seemed in need of cheering up with a quick joke or grin. When he loved others, he could give up a treasured bag of Margarry's sweets to someone he believed needed them more. When he loved others, it was only logical that he would want to atone for his mistakes.

Maybe he had already redeemed himself, though, and perhaps all he had to do was forgive himself for his previous errors. After all, when you messed up, there was little you could do except apologize, try to right the wrong as much as possible, and not repeat the offense in the future. Nobody could travel back in time to completely reverse a crime they perpetrated, and it was unfair to blame oneself for that. It was better to accept mistakes and move on twice as wise.

Really, Owen told himself, he should have absolved himself of his role in the deaths of those who had perished owing to Walden's sabotage, and he ought not to have even felt remorse over the end of a duplicitous spy like Walden.

After all, he had only been trying to protect his friend by not reporting Walden's suspicious behavior. While it might have been wrong to lie for his friend's sake, he had sincerely believed that his loyalty to a man who had comforted him and who had been consoled by him outweighed his obligation to enforce the fort rules to a letter. In the final analysis, his misjudgment had flowed from a genuine thirst to do good, not evil. His true crime was in trusting too much and placing his faith in a man who had ultimately proven unworthy of it.

As for killing Walden, the man had been a spy who had taken advantage of Owen's openness. A person who had plotted betraying him even as he shared his treats from Margarry wasn't deserving of Owen's mercy, but Owen still had been merciful. He hadn't inflicted any injury upon Walden until the man had tackled him and was about to gut him. Only then had Owen killed Walden. Even then, he had ensured that the death was a rapid one, rather than a protracted one punctuated by torture and interrogations.

_A knight is gentle_, Owen reminded himself_. A knight's first duty is to understand._

That meant that a knight comprehended that no one was perfect, and, therefore, that everyone was in need of forgiveness. That meant that a knight realized that sometimes something that appeared so right at the time could in hindsight seem so blatantly wrong that the person who performed the action could only puzzle over how the choice had ever looked appropriate in the first place. That meant that a knight acknowledged that sometimes conscience was a more reliable moral compass than the law. That meant that a knight tempered justice with mercy. That was probably why Wyldon had not charged Kel and those who followed her to Scanra with treason, because he had understood that while what they had done was illegal, it was right on some higher moral plane, and he wasn't going to punish them for abiding by their consciences.

When it came down to it, maybe Owen was better equipped to enforce the law of the realm now that he had committed treason. Since he had broken the law himself, he could comprehend more clearly the desperate circumstances that might compel an individual to violate the law. When he was himself guilty of a capital offense, he could understand more deeply when it was acceptable to bend or break a law, and when a law should be adhered to absolutely.

Perhaps that meant that he could finally stop wondering whether his decision to abandon his country and his knightmaster made him unworthy of being a knight since he had placed a higher priority upon fulfilling his duty to a friend and her refugees than upon doing his duty to the realm by continuing to serve with Lord Wyldon. Maybe it was time to cease tormenting himself over an agonizing choice he had been forced to make that would have rendered him a traitor no matter what he decided. Perhaps it was time he finally accepted entirely that there had been no right action under the circumstances, and he had only done what he believed to be the most moral thing, and, with Blayce and Stenmun dead, it was indeed hard to argue that he had been wrong…

Yes, he really had to learn to forgive himself. A person who couldn't show mercy to himself would have difficulty treating others with it. After all, while it was fair to demand more of yourself than you did of anyone else, when you failed to meet your expectations, you had to accept that you weren't perfect and just strive not to repeat your mistakes.

Dimly, he noticed that the chapel around him was growing lighter by an almost imperceptible degree. Mithros shield him, dawn was approaching. Why couldn't this vigil go on for several more hours? Sitting around and thinking by himself wasn't nearly as dreadful as he had initially imagined it would be…

Even though he had been trying not to look at the Chamber all night, against his will, his eyes riveted on the entrance to the Chamber. Bile scorched a path up his esophagus. Fervently, he wished that he didn't have to undergo his Ordeal alone.

As hysteria rose up inside him, he remembered Margarry's promise that he would never truly be alone, because she would always be beside him even if he couldn't see her. Abruptly, he felt like a fool. He would never be alone, since he carried around inside him pieces of everybody he had ever known.

He had his mother's gray eyes, and her savage murder was the reason he had decided to become a knight in the first place. He had his father's tendency to dream big and flair for the dramatic. He had Opal's free spirit, and, whenever they were together, their insanity always spurred both of them onto even greater heights of impulsive lunacy. He had Olivia's penchant for trusting swiftly and easily. He had Margarry's wit and strength. He had Wyldon's determination and dedication to duty. He had Kel's courage and compassion. He had Quinton's capacity to endure hardships with a grin and a quip. He had Merric's passion, and Neal's resistance to practically all forms of authority. He even had a touch more caution thanks to Walden.

Before he had been convinced that during his Ordeal, he would have to be strong for the sake of the people he cared about, and that was true. Now, though, he recognized that so much of the strength he would require in his Ordeal would not originate from himself, but rather from the beings he had known. When so much of who he was consisted of traits he had learned from others, he could never be alone, and that was a considerable comfort to someone who had always feared isolation. As long as he loved, he would never be by himself. Love really was all he needed. Love could conquer fear, and it was more powerful than hatred and guilt, because it had allowed him not only to forgive his father and Walden but also himself.

That was all Owen had time to think before the Mithran priests filed into the chapel, unbolted the entrance to the Chamber, and gestured for him to enter. Taking a deep breath and reaching inside him to a place of sheer resolve that was stronger even than his terror of what horrors the Chamber had in store for him, he pushed himself off the bench. His knees and legs must have been transformed to pudding over his night long vigil, because they wobbled as he rose. Even as his feet implored him to run, his mind bullied him into moving forward.

Finally, after what felt like an hour but was probably less than a moment, Owen was inside the Chamber, which was even darker and colder than the chapel. As soon as he was inside the room, a priest shut the door. Instantly, what faint light and warmth that had streamed into the Chamber from the chapel faded.

Owen shivered reflexively. The second he realized what he had done, he scowled. He was too old to be scared of the dark, after all, and the coldness of the Ordeal couldn't have been worse than the iciness of the winter months along the Scanran border. Besides, he had nothing to fear from a cold and dark room. The only coldness and darkness he had to fear was the kind that dwelled in people's hearts.

_He didn't know how he could see this scene, since he wasn't present in it, but somehow he could. How he could view it wasn't important. All that mattered was what he was witnessing. _

_All that mattered was seeing his sisters and a dozen other young noblewomen chained together on a plain outside the besieged City of the Gods. All that mattered was seeing them stumble along with the whips of Scanrans lashing into their backs. All that mattered was the knowledge that the Scanrans had broken the sanctity of the convent and were taking his sisters to Scanra to be sold into slavery. All that mattered was the fact that he had caused this nightmare to happen because he hadn't been worried about his sisters when he had heard of the siege around the City of the Gods―he had only been concerned about Margarry. _

_His heart was ripped to shreds when he spotted the torn, ugly slave dresses that had replaced his sisters' elegant gowns. Helpless fury blazed inside him as he understood that the Scanrans must have stolen his sisters' clothing in order to earn extra money from selling it in Scanra. Appearances weren't important, and, his sisters would be just as noble on the inside if they were wearing a potato sack, which they practically were now. However, stealing was always wrong, and stealing someone's clothing amounted to the same thing as trying to rob a being of their identity, just as forcing somebody to wear clothes that weren't their own was. _

_When he saw the dirt covering Opal's and Olivia's faces except for the thin, damp streaks cleared by the tears streaming down their cheeks, Owen felt like crying himself, but, somehow, he restrained himself when he recognized that all the tears in the world would not rescue his sisters. _

_When he watched two burly Scanrans thrash Olivia and Opal, he wished that it was his own skin the lash was slicing into, but it wasn't. It was theirs, and there was nothing he could do to shield them, because he was leagues away, protecting strangers along the Scanran border. Nobody could save everyone, and this time it was his sisters that he was unable to rescue. _

_He saw the blood soak their dresses as the Scanrans flayed them, and he wanted to lurch forward, snatch the whips out of the Scanrans' hands, and beat the men who dared to hurt his sisters. Yet, that was something else he couldn't do, because he wasn't there, and, even if he had been there, he couldn't do that anyway. No matter how much he sometimes wished he could be as brutal as his enemies, he couldn't allow himself to become as savage as they were. That would be winning the battle and losing the war. _

_No, all he could do was watch this nightmare unfold. All he could do was hope that he would have a chance to rescue them from slavery in the future. All he could do was remember to appreciate his loved ones before they were stolen from him next time. _

_The scene shifted, but it did so subtly enough that Owen barely even registered the change before he was wrapped up in a new terror. The Chamber had been dark before, but now all the light in the entire world seemed to have gone out, even though the Chamber somehow let him know that he was sitting on a balcony with sun shining down on him. His skin couldn't even feel the sun warming it. _

_Of course he couldn't see or feel the sun, because he hadn't seen or felt anything in months, not since the latest evil mage the Scanrans had found figured out how to deny people of all their senses, and he had fallen victim to that spell._

_He couldn't see the frustration on the faces of his sisters, Margarry, Wyldon, Kel, and Neal as they struggled for probably the millionth time to find some manner in which to communicate with him. In fact, he wouldn't have even noticed their presence on the balcony if the Chamber hadn't told him they were there. Certainly, he would not have been able to see the letter Neal shoved under his nose if the Chamber hadn't revealed it to him. _

_He couldn't hear Wyldon's steadily rising voice as the man repeated his name. He couldn't hear Margarry whisper in his ear. He couldn't hear Kel summon her sparrows to sing for him. He couldn't hear Olivia praying that some miracle would heal him. Indeed, he wouldn't have known that any of them had spoken if it hadn't been for the Chamber assuring him that it was so. _

_He couldn't feel the cool flames of Neal's emerald magic soaring into his veins as Neal tried for the hundredth time to cure him again. He couldn't feel Opal resting her head against his shoulder. He couldn't feel Margarry's palm stroking his cheek tenderly. He couldn't feel Olivia squeezing his hand in a futile attempt to assure him that he wasn't alone. _

_He couldn't smell the blossoming flowers that the Chamber insisted surrounded the balcony, and he couldn't smell the disgusting herbal remedy Neal shoved under his nose. _

_His tongue tasted nothing when Neal pried open his mouth and poured the medicine down his throat. In fact, it was only gravity that caused him to swallow, because his tongue felt no sensation that indicated there was anything in his mouth that he needed to gulp down. _

_When Margarry took advantage of his open mouth to drop one of her treats into his mouth, he didn't chew, since he felt and tasted nothing that suggested food was resting on his tongue. In the end, Margarry gave up and removed the sweet, and Owen would have known none of this if the Chamber hadn't explained it to him._

_Without the Chamber, all he would have known was an infinite blackness that would have been unimaginable to him before he was deprived of all his senses. Being unable to see the sun, candles, colors, the weapons he had once spent so much time training with, and the people he loved was only a small fraction of the endless darkness his world had become. _

_When he couldn't hear voices, barks, whinnies, clashing swords, or music, he had no way of knowing who was around him, and where he was. To him, a ballroom and a battlefield sounded the same―as silent as a library or a grave. To him, the voice of a foe was just as noiseless as the voice of a friend. To him, there was no longer any difference between being in the stables or the kennels and being in the castle. All he ever knew was impenetrable silence wherever he went, and, for all he knew, he never went anywhere, anyway. _

_When he couldn't feel anything, he couldn't ever have any physical confirmation that someone was beside him. When he couldn't feel anything, he couldn't respond to any clap on the back, any hug, any kiss, or any hand squeeze. When he couldn't feel anything, he couldn't even be aware of any gesture of affection. When he couldn't feel anything, he couldn't lavish any more attention on Blaze or any of Wyldon's dogs, who had become attached to him. After all, it was hard to tend to an animal when you couldn't even feel yourself petting it. _

_When he couldn't taste, he never knew what he was consuming. When he couldn't taste, he could no longer recognize that there was even food in his mouth, so the healers had to mash all his foods into liquids that he could swallow. When he couldn't taste, spinach was as delicious as fudge. _

_When he couldn't smell, he couldn't discern whether he was inside or outside. When he couldn't smell, he couldn't tell if the autumn leaves were decaying or the summer flowers were in bloom. When he couldn't smell, a corpse had the same scent as a rose. _

_When he was denied of all his senses, he was deprived off all input from the outside. All he had was himself. He was completely alone, and he would always be so. Maybe that was the ultimate destiny of all humans. After all, no matter how many people clustered around a deathbed, everyone had to make their final journey to the Divine Realms alone. _

_But he wasn't alone, not really. He had the memories of loved ones to sustain him, and if he believed that they were beside him, that was as good as having proof of their presence. He didn't have to be afraid of being alone, because, even with all his senses stolen from him, he wouldn't be isolated. He would only be truly isolated if he believed he was alone. _

_Suddenly, his senses were returned to him. The din of battle was almost enough to deafen him, and the sight of bloody corpses and crimson weapons was almost enough to make him long for blindness. In the confusion created by the abrupt return of his senses, it took him a moment to understand that he and Margarry were fighting the outlaws that had attacked them in Cavall again. _

_The confrontation wasn't going well, and, suddenly, three bandits made a surprise strike close to Margarry. Owen spotted the impending assault before she did. _

_She saw it only a split second behind him and turned to deflect an outlaw's knife with one of her own. Unfortunately, she was forced to pivot on her left leg, leaving her right side slightly exposed. _

_"I've got it!" Owen shouted to her, but, over the clash of weapons, she didn't hear him. _

_Not having the time to repeat himself, Owen leaped forward, his sword arcing to decapitate one bandit, but Marrgarry had already shifted and turned to compensate for her move, and the two of them collided. Owen was taller and stronger than Margarry, who was thrown to the side as a result. _

_An enemy dagger ripped into her leg. With a cry, she fell, her two knives flying into the air to be lost in the confusion of the battle. As she fell, another dagger plunged into her neck, and her cry was suddenly silenced. _

_Gazing on in horror with his mouth gaping open, Owen wanted to scream, but no sound emerged from his lips. They were paralyzed, because if there was one thing worse than hearing Margarry scream, it was hearing the howl ended abruptly. Of course, even that paled in comparison to seeing the blood coating her throat like a ruby necklace, seeing her skin that had been flushed with the exertion of fighting become ashen, seeing the breath leave her body and not return, seeing her eyes flutter closed for her eternal sleep, and her lips part in a manner that suggested her final rest was a peaceful one. _

_He wanted to bend down and hold her hand, because all the outlaws that could kill him didn't matter as long as he was allowed to whisper a final goodbye to Margarry, but there was no point in kneeling beside her, clutching her hand in his own, and whispering that he loved her in her ear. After all, she was already dead. Never again would she be able to hear anything he said to her. Never again would her warm hand wrap around his. _

_She was dead, and it was all his fault. During the battle, he had calculated the angle of the attack and what he would need to do to block it, but he hadn't factored in the notion that Margarry would be moving as well. He had been so eager to protect her that he had ended up killing her by mistake. His impulsiveness had cost Margarry her life. He had been the death of the woman he loved more than life itself. By holding on too tightly to Margarry, he had ended up losing her forever. _

_The irony was too much for him, and he wanted to stomp his feet, tear out his hair, and scream out his rage at a world that could be so cruel to him and to Margarry, but there was no profit to be had in any of those theatrics. None of those signs of grief could convey how broken his heart was. After all, the heart broke so silently that nobody could possibly hear, and, suddenly, Owen wanted to be quiet for the rest of his life. He wanted to act like he was dead just so that the world would know exactly how much it had killed when it murdered Margarry. _

_Yet, that wouldn't do, either. He had to let Margarry rest in peace. After all, the harsh lesson of her death was that clinging too tightly to those you loved not only destroyed those you held dear but also tore your heart asunder. No, his punishment for his role in Margarry's death was that he would have to go on living. The only way to honor her was by reaching out to others as she would have done, rather than remaining quiet forever. It was his duty to let the parts of her that had been integrated into him shine now, because as long as he allowed her to live through him, she would not be dead. If he taught others to be like Margarry and they passed along the lessons, maybe Margarry would live forever. _

From a long way off, Owen heard the door of the Chamber creak open, and light flooded the room. As light penetrated the Chamber, he raised his hands to shield his eyes from it, because it was far too bright for someone who had been trapped in the sort of darkness he had to tolerate.

It vaguely occurring to him that the Chamber had thrown nothing but illusions at him, since he and Margarry had already survived the fight with the bandits just as the siege around the City of the Gods had ended months ago, he stumbled out of the Chamber.

His bones felt like wax, and his muscles like goo. As a result, walking seemed to demand much more coordination than he had ever noticed before, and all of his battered brain was focused on the effort it required to leave the Chamber.

When he stepped out of the Chamber, he felt a hand clench his elbow firmly, steadying him. Looking to his right, he saw Lord Wyldon and judged from the shadows under the man's eyes that Wyldon hadn't gotten much sleep last night.

"Congratulations," Wyldon said softly once Owen's eyes fixed on him.

"I don't want congratulations." Numbly, Owen shook his head and was appalled by how strangled his own voice sounded, but he supposed that it was only natural that he had difficulty speaking after he had been silent for so long. Congratulations was the last thing he wanted right now. He didn't want Wyldon's praise, and he didn't want to hear the clapping of all the people who had crowded into the chapel.

All he wanted was to return to his bedroom, where he could cry, vomit, and scream in peace. After that, maybe he would wipe away the sweat coating his body and take a nap, so that he could start the inevitable nightmares about what he had seen in the Chamber. Beyond that, his exhausted mind wasn't going to think about what might happen.

Before Wyldon could respond, Owen found himself disappearing in a tangle of arms as Margarry, Opal, and Olivia hugged him so fiercely that his breath and any remaining strength were sapped from him. As their arms encircled him, he suddenly didn't want to do anything but squeeze them back. All he wanted was to feel physical confirmation that they were all still alive and well.

He could tell by the passion with which they all clung to him that they were equally relieved to see that he was alive and sane. With a pang, he recognized that he loved them even more than he had thought. None of them had ever looked prettier to him than they did now, he noted inwardly, and Margarry's rosewater had never smelled sweeter to him. It didn't even occur to him that Wyldon might not approve of his hugging Margarry for so long in pubic when Wyldon seemed to have enough difficulty handling the fact that he was hugging Margarry at all.


	52. Chapter 52

Aftermath

Owen was on the plain outside the City of the Gods again. He was seeing the Scanrans whip his sisters once more. He was hearing their screams and wails as the lashes cut into their soft, vulnerable backs and shoulders. He was hearing Olivia begging Mithros and the Goddess to save her, and he was wondering why they didn't intervene to rescue a young woman who didn't even step on insects when she could avoid it.

Again, he was watching Opal struggling to gather her courage and accept the blows without crying out, because she didn't want to give her tormenter the satisfaction of knowing how much the man was wounding her. As Owen stared on helplessly, her head turned toward him, even though she couldn't possibly spot him when he was invisible, and he watched as her cheek was ground further into the dirt.

Beside Opal, Olivia's eyes had squeezed shut in a futile attempt to block out the pain, and her face was pale, as though she were on the verge of fainting. Rage roared through his veins at the sight of someone callously beating his sweet sister. His fury was only increased by the fact that he was her older brother, who was supposed to protect her and Opal…

He had failed them both. He hadn't protected them properly, and he couldn't rescue them. Despite all his warrior training, he was as helpless as they were, and, in spite of all the lives he had saved, he couldn't rescue two of the people who were dearest to him.

A strangled howl tore through his lips, because he had finally reached the breaking point―the anguish boiling inside his soul needed to be released somehow. It didn't matter anymore that shouting would do no good. After all, nothing would, and he had to protest against the cruel whims of fate somehow.

The sound of his own scream, muffled by his pillow, awoke him. Once he was awake, it took him a moment to escape from the clutches of the nightmare. He had relived the horrible illusions the Chamber had shown happening to his sisters, just as he had previously relived Margarry's death and his total sensory deprivation.

Deciding that trying to catch up on the rest he had been deprived of last night was pointless if nightmares were going to ensure that he received basically no sleep, he rolled over and got out of bed. As he flipped over, he felt the tears that had accumulated on his pillow brush against his cheeks and learned that he didn't have to be awake to cry.

Confirmation of this theory came when he stumbled over to his dresser and saw in the mirror his bloodshot eyes, which complemented his flushed face nicely. His reflection made him recognize just how much he needed to clean himself up. His mind still dwelling on the terrible lies the Ordeal had forced him to believe were true, he scrubbed the sweat and tears from his face, wishing that his nightmares were as easy to wipe away.

Water and soap never could clean off the most important things, Owen grumbled inwardly as he removed his sweat-soaked nightclothes and threw on a shirt and breeches, which, as far as he could tell in his dazed state, seemed to match, or at least didn't clash too blatantly. Then, not really wanting to leave the safety of his bedchamber, but at the same time reluctant to stay in a room where the air was thick with the memory of his Ordeal, he left his bedroom.

As he entered the office that connected his and Lord Wyldon's quarters, Wyldon glanced up from reading a report to eye him closely.

"You look better than you did when you emerged from your Ordeal, at any rate," remarked Wyldon after studying Owen from top to toe, gesturing for the younger man to sit in the chair across from him.

"Appearances can be deceiving, my lord," Owen mumbled, taking the seat Wyldon had indicated. "I still feel like a walking corpse."

"Everyone feels that way after that way after their Ordeal," Wyldon answered, and Owen was abruptly flooded with loathing for the Chamber. It was indescribably brutal of the Chamber to deny squires who had already seen warfare as well as the poverty and injustice in the realm of their precious little remaining innocence. It was unfathomably wicked of the Chamber to steal the lives and sanity of young men. It was mind-numbingly evil of the Chamber to scar that hearts of every knight in the country. It was chilling to the bone marrow to contemplate how the Chamber had no qualms about preying on the worst memories and fears of those who would devote most of their existences to serving Tortall. "With time, your recollection of the Ordeal will become less vivid. Rarely something will happen that will remind you of your Ordeal, and you'll never completely forget what happened to you in the Chamber, but the pain will lessen and life goes on."

"I hate the Chamber," Owen hissed fiercely, his gray eyes sizzling. Abruptly, it didn't matter if he recovered from what the Chamber had inflicted on him, because the fact still remained that it had done everything it could to break him, and that was unpardonable. "I hate what it does to people without a trace of remorse."

"You hate too easily, Owen." Sighing, Wyldon shook his head, and Owen wondered if the Chamber was meant to make people hate it. Maybe its objective was to churn out knights who were as cold and as hard as it was. "The Chamber is just a room albeit a magical one. It's irrational to detest a room."

"Everything about that room is irrational, and the Chamber is just a room the way a Stormwing is just a bird, sir," countered Owen, sticking out his chin stubbornly. "Besides, I can hate anyone and anything that insists on destroying beings without a twinge of guilt."

"You're hating the Chamber for doing no more than its duty," Wyldon pointed out quietly, his dark eyes adopting the haunted expression they had when he discussed the Chamber and the Ordeal with Owen on their journey to Corus. "It's the Chamber's job to hammer at the fault lines in a potential knight to see if he shatters. Only knights that will not break are of any use to the realm."

Biting his lip, Owen discovered that he didn't know how to respond to this. Wyldon took advantage of his silence to continue, "In a way, the Chamber is actually a mercy. If it didn't exist, the task of pounding at a squire's weaknesses until the breaking point would fall to the knightmaster. That would be impractical and unfair to everyone involved. Impractical because what is required to bring someone who has endured eight years of warrior training to the shattering point is tremendous pressure, and creating that pressure in real life would be not only extremely difficult but in many cases unethical, as it would likely endanger the wellbeing of at least one other person besides the squire. It would be unfair to the squire, because if the knightmaster held back, it would be unjust to make a squire a knight without testing him properly. It would be unfair for the country because if a knightmaster didn't test a squire correctly, that improperly tested knight could break on the front lines one day, which could have fatal consequences for countless people. It would also be unfair to put a knightmaster in the position of pushing his squire to the shatterpoint and beyond." Wyldon's eyes pierced into Owen, who swallowed hard, realizing for the first time that it was probably as difficult to send your squire into the Chamber as it was to undergo the Ordeal yourself. "Owen, I have never been the most indulgent of teachers, and I have never had a problem with pushing my students."

"I know, my lord," Owen agreed, wrinkling his nose. Certainly, he understood from experience how hard Wyldon pushed his pupils. After all, he had clear memories of running along castle ramparts until he was convinced he was about to vomit, and he would never forget practicing his fighting skills as a page until he felt like he was about to faint only to have to pay attention during the mostly boring academic subjects after a lunch that was never enough to restore his energy. He would probably always have blisters from all the sword and archery training; the bruises from staff work were definitely permanent additions to his body. As Owen's knightmaster, Wyldon had only been a more demanding instructor, because he could focus his complete attention on all of Owen's myriad shortcomings, which he was determined to stamp out. Owen had no trouble recalling training sessions that lasted most of a day during which he had been pushed beyond exhaustion and forced to fight, anyway. The sickening crack that his ankle had made when it broke during a jousting exercise wasn't something he was likely to forget, either. Really, it was a marvel that he didn't hate Lord Wyldon for his harsh training methods, but, then again, Owen supposed he would have to be very ungrateful indeed to despise a man who had poured so much time and effort into teaching him. "I've been training under you for eight years. I'd have to be stupider than I am not to have noticed that by now."

"If you're so clever, you might have recognized that every time I pushed a student, it was because I wanted to make them a better warrior, not because I wished to break them." Wyldon's lips thinned. "The difference between the two is considerable. I'm not sure that I would be able to push a student until they were at the shatterpoint, but I know that I could never do that to you, Owen. I've known you since you were an exuberant, impulsive, and ill-mannered ten-year-old. I've seen you at your best and at your worst. As a result, I have found your fault lines―the places where a sharp rap has the potential to crack you forever. If I was expected to hit you on those shatterpoints hard enough to break you, I couldn't do it. If I knew that there was a real chance that I could kill you or drive you insane, I would hold back, even if I knew it would be unfair to you and to the whole country."

Feeling a migraine coming on from all the recent stress he had been under, Owen massaged his forehead and made no response, because he didn't know what one he could possibly make.

"Many knightmasters would hold back as well out of similar sentiments, or out of a desire not to wreck a squire they have invested years in training," concluded Wyldon grimly. "Whatever you think of it, Owen, we need that Chamber. Without it, there truly would be no adequate way of determining who really is qualified to serve Tortall as a knight."

"Yes, sir." Owen's voice sounded parched, and that wasn't so amazing when he realized that he hadn't consumed any beverage since his visit to the city with Margarry and his sisters.

Perhaps Wyldon detected from his tone how thirsty Owen was, because he reached into a drawer and withdrew a bottle of wine and two glasses, commenting, "Wine is famous for its ability to boost people's morale, and it has also been found to help many an individual forget an unpleasant situation."

"You mean that it's traditional for squires to recover from the Ordeal by getting blasted out of their craniums," observed Owen bluntly. "Only when they are drunk can they actually enjoy being knighted."

"Your subtlety never ceases to astonish me." Wyldon's lips twitched upward wryly. "After passing their Ordeals, squires are expected to be mature enough to consume only moderate amounts of alcohol." Here, he waved a hand at the wine bottle. "Well, would you care to start your moderate drinking now?"

"No, thank you, sir." Owen shook his head firmly. Honestly, he hadn't considered drinking himself, despite all the times he had complained about his father's reliance on alcohol, but now that he was offered wine for the first time, he discovered that it wasn't difficult for him to make a decision. His aversion to alcohol was an instinct born from the suffering he and his sisters had endured thanks to the substance's control over their father. "I should be careful not to begin drinking. Alcoholism tends to run in families, after all, and I don't wish to become a drunkard."

"Owen." For a moment, Wyldon paused, organizing his thoughts, and then he went on, "I have nothing but admiration for beings who choose to abstain from consuming alcohol. Still, before you decide not to drink at all, I think you should understand that there is a major distinction between drinking excessively and being dependent upon alcohol as opposed to drinking moderately and not being addicted to alcohol. Drinking excessively can lead to unnecessarily violent behavior, irresponsible actions, a loss of emotional control, a lack of coordination, a decrease in logical capabilities, passing out, vomiting, and even death. I would never recommend that anyone drink to excess, nonetheless on a regular basis. Drinking moderately, on the other hand, isn't such an awful thing. Alcohol in small doses helps make people more sociable, relaxes them, and reduces their inhibitions."

"Then I really don't need to drink." Owen bullied his lips into grinning even though he didn't find the topic of him drinking remotely amusing after being raised by an alcoholic father. "I'm already sociable, and I certainly don't need to have less inhibitions, my lord. I'm impulsive enough as it is, and I have no control over my mouth when I'm completely sober. Even moderate amounts of wine would probably be too much for me. I get drunk off life."

At this point, he recognized that the smile wasn't working its magic, and so he didn't waste the effort maintaining it, as he added, "Besides, if I drink once to cheer myself up, I might have to do it again in the future. Before I was aware of it, I'd become dependent on alcohol to make me happy. I don't want my joy to come from inside a bottle; I want it to emerge from within me."

"I understand." Wyldon nodded as he returned the wine and the glasses to the drawer. "You should know, though, that people also drink wine to celebrate, and, when you're knighted tonight, many beings will expect you to share a glass of wine with them to commemorate your achievement."

"Don't worry about that, sir," Owen said earnestly. "It's simple to have a glass of wine and pretend to drink it. I've been watching people at parties for years, so I know that when you have a glass of wine, you don't so much as drink it as you sniff it, lift it up to the light to examine it, slosh it around, frown as you finally take the tiniest sip, and then you make a thoughtful remark about it that sounds more like you are describing a person than a drink. It will be easy enough to go through the motions of drinking and just not take the small sip."

For the second time since he had met Lord Wyldon, something Owen said caused the older man to chuckle briefly. Just as he had been on the first occasion Wyldon had laughed at a comment of his, Owen felt surprised. Then, a second later, the shock gave way to a sense of pride that he was one of a select group of individuals who could make Wyldon of Cavall chuckle.

"I only meant that you would have to explain numerous times that you don't want to drink, not that you would have to devise an elaborate charade to mask the fact that you weren't drinking," Wyldon replied once his laughter had died as suddenly as it commenced.

"If the people have been drinking, there's no point in explaining anything to them, since they won't comprehend or remember it." Owen shrugged. He hesitated for a moment, not knowing how to broach one of the most crucial topics he would ever discuss in his life, and then asked in a tone that he was sure trembled like pudding with his nerves, "My lord, may I talk to you about something important?"

"It was my understanding that we were talking right now, Owen." Wyldon arched an eyebrow at him. "What is it you want to say?"

"Margarry is an amazing young woman." Owen took the plunge, bursting out with everything about Margarry that made his heart pound like a drum and robbed him of his breath, because he didn't know how else to convey the depth of his love of Margarry to Lord Wyldon. "She is one of the smartest people I've ever met, and she has probably read more books than most of the scholars at the university. She is one of the swiftest and most graceful riders I've ever raced against. Her sarcasm never fails to amuse me. Her sprit energizes me, and her strength supports me. When I'm at war, I look forward to receiving her letters, because they aren't stilted like many people's are, but rather they are genuine extensions of her personality. If I'm with her, even the simplest things feel sublime. When I'm with her, the grass is greener, the sky is bluer, the sun shines brighter, and the clouds are fluffier. Her grin can banish any of my fears, and her laugh always makes me want to join in her laughter even if I don't know the joke yet. Her hand in mine makes me feel like I'm flying. When I'm with her, I think that I can talk about anything, but I never feel like I have to speak if I don't want to. She is more of a home to me than any place ever could be. I'd die to protect her in a heartbeat." Steeling himself with a deep breath, Owen finished in a rush, "Sir, I'd like your permission to propose to your youngest daughter."

"Humph," Wyldon grunted and stroked his bad arm. "I imagine that if I don't provide my consent, you and my daughter, headstrong and impetuous as you both are, will just elope behind my back."

"No, my lord," answered Owen through the lump that had developed in his throat, because he wasn't certain that he was offering the proper response. After all, perhaps the best way to attain Wyldon's approval of his proposing to Margarry was to act like the wedding would occur with or withoutWyldon's consent, which might force Wyldon to agree to the match in order to maintain some control over the proceedings. Yet, Owen wasn't willing to lie to Wyldon, and especially not about something this important. "I understand how close you and Margarry are. I know that you loved her long before I ever did, and that she loved you for years before I entered her life. I wouldn't elope with her knowing that it would drive a wedge between you two."

"If my daughter reciprocates your feelings, my refusing your match would drive a wedge between us, anyway, especially since I have already promised her that she may marry whomever she wishes." Wyldon's lips twisted as he made this wry observation.

"I can't help that, sir," Owen pointed out. "I couldn't prevent myself from falling in love with Margarry, just like she couldn't stop herself from falling in love with me."

"Owen, your feelings are spontaneous and deep. That means that just as you are prone to hating too easily, you're likely to love too quickly." Wyldon sighed, shaking his head and scratching the arm that had been ravaged by the hurrock again. "Those who fall in love too rapidly tend to wake up in the morning to learn that their brand of love has a nasty habit of vanishing overnight."

"Don't diminish what I've felt." Owen bristled and folded his arms across his chest. "Refuse if you have to, but don't diminish what I've felt. What I've felt for Margarry is as complex as anything you have ever felt for your wife."

"If you thought to perform some basic mathematical calculations, you would have realized that, if my youngest child is your age, then I must have been married longer than you have been alive." Wyldon shot Owen an icy glare that was enough to freeze the younger man's blood in his veins. "That means that I have known Vivienne for more years than you have been breathing. Every one of those years added another layer to our relationship, since every year contained a thousand little memories that came together to add depth to our relationship. I've been loving my wife since years before you were born, and, by the time you were teething, Vivienne and I had already created a family together. I think it is you, young man, who is guilty of diminishing what I've felt."

"Age isn't the only indicator of the depth of love." Owen's jaw tightened resolutely. "Plenty of people die of old age without experiencing true love, and many people who have been wed for decades are trapped in loveless marriages. Besides, the love between Margarry and I can't develop as the love between you and Lady Vivienne did if you don't give it a chance to grow, my lord."

"It's not that I necessarily consider you and Margarry a poor match," conceded Wyldon, fingering the scars on his face. "I've seen evidence of passion and devotion in the regular correspondence between the pair of you. I know that you are always looking out for Margarry's best interests, and, even though we don't always agree on what those are, I do respect you for being brave enough to argue with me over what's best for her. I have no reason to believe that you would ever treat my daughter with anything less than tenderness and respect, and I haven't forgotten how you saved her life from the bandits, either."

Here, Wyldon paused and shrugged before resuming, "However, I also am familiar enough with the personalities of both my daughter and you to worry about a marriage between the two of you. Both of you are headstrong and impulsive. When you are together, your willfulness and impetuousness feed off each other, which can land the two of you in trouble, as it did when you took your unauthorized trip to a refugee camp. It is not difficult for me to imagine those traits leading you both into an early, potentially unwise, marriage in which you both discover that you aren't nearly as in love as you once believed."

Before Owen could stammer out a defense, Wyldon's dark eyes lanced into him. "My answer to your request to propose to my daughter isn't a no, though, if you will promise me one thing."

"I swear that I'll always love Margarry, I'll always be loyal to her, I'll always protect her as best I can, and I'll never hurt her," Owen vowed instantly, thinking that was what the older man wanted to hear and aware that every word that emerged from his mouth was the absolute truth.

"Good, but I do not require that you make such a promise to me," Wyldon informed him, and Owen stared. "After all, you will swear such things to the gods at the wedding ceremony should you marry my daughter. If vows that you offer to the gods aren't binding enough to make you treat Margarry properly, I am not arrogant enough to believe that any promises you made to me would be. No, I want you to promise me something that doesn't appear in any wedding vows."

"What do you want me to promise, my lord?" Owen wanted to know, frowning as his forehead furrowed as he tried to figure out what important item Wyldon believed had been left out of the marriage vows. He also didn't bother to mention that, in some ways, a promise made to Wyldon would indeed feel more binding to him than a vow made to the gods. As blasphemous as it sounded, the gods were such invisible and insubstantial entities, whereas Wyldon was such a solid and steady being. There were times when it was hard to believe in the gods, but there were no times when it was difficult to believe in Lord Wyldon of Cavall. There were occasions when it seemed easy to renege on a promise made to the gods, but there would never be an occasion when breaking faith with Wyldon appeared uncomplicated.

"I want you to promise me that if Margarry accepts your proposal, the two of you will wait at least three years before you marry one another," pronounced Wyldon, his eyes penetrating Owen, who could feel his heart plummeting, because three years was an eternity to a young person in love.

"Three years?" Owen repeated, hoping he had misheard. "That's a terribly long time!"

"If you love someone, waiting three years to ensure that your feelings are genuine and that you truly wish to be with that person for the rest of your life isn't so awful." Unperturbed, Wyldon shrugged. "However, if you hurry into an early marriage and discover three years into that you don't really love your partner and the two of you aren't as compatible as you thought, you'll be sentencing yourself to a lifetime of mutual misery unless a tragic death befalls one of you or one of you commits an offense serious enough to warrant a divorce."

Seeing Owen's scowl, Wyldon relented and added, "I know that it's hard for you to believe right now, but I have both Margarry's and yours best interest at heart. The two of you have the unusual opportunity of picking your own spouses. It is a great gift to be able to select your own husband or wife, since you have the chance to marry someone you truly love, which can make your marriage much happier than many arranged marriages. At the same time, picking your own partner is incredibly risky, because, if you choose the wrong being, you are likely to end up in a marriage more miserable than many arranged marriages. After all, if you choose the wrong spouse, you may not be compatible at all, while arranged marriages are often made because the two parties involved are judged to be compatible in some manner. Also, when you choose your spouse, you expect your marriage to be filled with love; an arranged marriage tends to be seen as a business entered into by both parties, and love is regarded as an added bonus that might develop over time. This means that people who select their spouses are likely to be far more bitter if their marriage is loveless than people in arranged marriages. Apart from that, people who choose their own partners cannot blame an unsuccessful marriage on parents who made a poor decision for them, but only can fault themselves for their bad selection. I do not want Margarry or you to squander the rare opportunity that you both have to choose your own partners, and I don't wish for either of you to turn a chance for great happiness into a torturous experience. That's why I want you two to be certain that you know and love each other as well as you think you do before you are wed. After all, engagements can be broken off fairly simply, but marriages cannot be ended nearly so painlessly."

Recognizing that Wyldon wasn't about to be swayed to turn the three year engagement into a shorter wait and knowing that he would have agreed to wait a hundred years for Margarry if he had to, Owen sighed, "I promise to wait three years before marrying Margarry if she accepts my proposal."

Wyldon opened his mouth to reply but was chopped off before he could begin by a sharp knock on the office door. Glowering at the interruption, he strode over to the door and opened it to reveal Margarry.

"Good morning again, Father." Margarry stood on tiptoes to kiss Lord Wyldon's cheek. Without waiting for a return greeting, she went on breathlessly, "Is Owen awake yet?"

At this point, she caught sight of Owen over her father's broad shoulder. As soon as her eyes found him, she lurched toward him, a vision in a scarlet cloak and gown that suddenly made him wish that he had attempted to tame his unruly hair more earlier, and threw her arms around him.

"You look famished," she announced as they pulled apart. "You must not have eaten a bite since yesterday."

"I am hungry," Owen admitted. Now that she brought it up, he could hear his empty stomach begging him to put something―anything―into it. His body craved food to restore the energy the Ordeal had drained from him. "I didn't notice that I was before, but now that you mention it, I'm starving."

"I'm ravenous enough to eat an entire herd of cows myself." Margarry grinned, her brown eyes sparkling like Midwinter ornaments. "Let's go into Corus. There's another carnival there today, and the food at festivals is always gloriously awful. That is, it tastes delicious, but you can always feel it congesting your arteries as you eat. Of course, maybe that's a good thing, because you know that you're getting full if your arteries are starting to clog."

Owen was about to agree to accompany her into the city not only because the gloriously awful food she described sounded amazing appetizing in his current state of starvation, but also because he would have consented to follow her to the worst parts of the afterlife if she asked it of him. However, Wyldon chose that minute to state icily, "Since I am your father, Margarry, you might consider asking me for permission before you go around inviting young men to accompany you into the city."

"I haven't invited young men to accompany me into the city," returned Margarry. "I've only invited one young man so far, and that's the way I intend to keep it."

"When you are so impudent, I should be eager to shove you off on any man foolish enough to believe he could handle your sharp tongue," growled Wyldon, and Owen heard the unspoken half of the sentence; the part that said Wyldon wasn't happy to give her to any man. After all, Wyldon had cradled her in his arms when she was a baby, clutched her fingers as she learned how to walk as a toddler, and taught her to ride when she was a child, so there was probably a large part of him that still perceived Margarry as a little girl instead of an adult. For years, Wyldon must have been the most important man in his youngest daughter's life, and it must have hurt to be overshadowed―overshadowed but not replaced. It must have killed something inside Lord Wyldon to allow Owen to propose to Margarry, since, although he had to know that Owen would always do his best to protect Margarry and look out for her best interests, Wyldon must still have thought that nobody could do as good a job of protecting and caring for his daughter as he had. "Go down into the city, then, both of you, and don't get into too much trouble."

"We'll be as good as we can be, Father," Margarry assured him in a tone so sweet that sugar could have melted on her tongue.

"Somehow I don't find that particularly comforting," snorted Wyldon.

"That's because I'm trying to give you more worry wrinkles," Margarry educated him, all innocence. "Mother and I both think that they make you look so distinguished."

Silently, as Wyldon questioned his daughter's taste, Owen slipped into his bedroom, thinking his absence was not likely to be noted, to don his cloak. Once he had put on his cloak, he pulled the box containing the diamond ring from the back of his dresser drawer and shoved it into the folds of his cloak. Then, prepared for his excursion to Corus, he stepped out of his room.

"Are you ready to go?" Margarry asked as soon as he left his room, proving that his brief disappearance had been noticed, after all.

"I'm always ready to spend time with you." Grinning, Owen nodded.

"More like, you are always ready to flatter me, and I am never prepared to accept it," teased Margarry, tossing her hair back. Then, she turned her attention on her father, and, hugging Wyldon, she said in a more serious tone, "I do love you, Father. I just show my love with defiance and insolence."

"As long as you persist in doing so, I have no choice but to demonstrate my love with lectures and punishments." Wyldon returned the embrace for a second, and then released Margarry with a gruff, "Run along now, you two, before whatever temporary insanity has conquered me disappears, and I change my mind."

Obediently, Owen and Margarry bustled out of Wyldon's office, and, within half an hour, they had arrived at the festival in the center of Corus. By the time, he and Margarry reached the carnival, Owen discovered that the conversation and laughter he had enjoyed with Margarry on their trip into the city had driven out the lingering nightmares of torture, death, and sensory deprivation created by the Ordeal.

When they purchased a meat and cheese pastry to share, he found that the hot food burned out the coldness in his body, while the spices mingling in his mouth reminded him of just how much of a miracle being alive and being with the woman he loved was.

Closing his eyes, Owen imprinted the scene―Margarry sitting across from him, her cheeks the color of apples thanks to the wind and the frigid temperature, sharing a steaming sausage and cheese pastry with him; a hundred people milling around the marketplace shouting, buying or selling merchandise, playing games, and watching the troubadours; the feeling of the cheese melting in his mouth and the taste of the spices biting into his tongue―in his memory. This would be a moment that he would want to freeze in time and return to often for a morale boost once he was back along the Scanran border.

Once they were done eating, they joined the crowd watching the troubadours. For two hours, they stood, applauding the agile maneuvers of the acrobats, chuckling at the jerky faux sword battle between four jesters, gasping at the man who swallowed six burning torches, cheering at the jugglers, singing along at to the ancient Midwinter ballads performed by the musicians, and listening silently as the storyteller began his tale.

When the storyteller began to speak, many in the crowd were restless, and some even started to drift away, but as the bard continued to declaim in a mellifluous tone that was somehow as entrancing as it was steady, many people reclaimed their places and listened as if the storyteller's voice was as addicting as alcohol.

The bard wove a tale that, like all great stories, began simply enough―umpromisingly even―but as the details began to emerge and profound truths could be discerned through the adventures, it became impossible for anyone to leave.

There was a hero and a heroine in the story, of course, and, as often transpired where both were present, a love story poignant and true arose. Greater issues than the emotions of the two lovers were at stake, though. The fates of hundreds lay in the balance, their lives and the lives of their children dependent upon the hero and the heroine making the correct decision―choosing to fight for truth and justice. There was sacrifice and warfare, greed and vengeance, and, in the end, as the fate of the two lovers hung suspended, redemption.

When the storyteller delivered the final surprise, there were shouts of delight and much applause from the onlookers.

"The story was enchanting," Margarry remarked, as she and Owen strode away from the throng around the troubadours. "I didn't care for the ending, however. The false friend who betrayed the two lovers shouldn't have conveniently died to save them at the climax. That was too unrealistic."

"It's a made-up tale, Margarry," Owen reminded her, as they headed through the packed streets toward the lane that led up to the Royal Palace. "It isn't real, so it doesn't have to be believable. It just has to take us away from the stress of the real world for awhile, and show us what life would be like if things actually turned out like they were supposed to."

"Stories are reflections of reality." Margarry shook her head. "Even when they are made-up, they should seem realistic."

"I reckon that you aren't a supporter of stories with happy endings, then," he commented, while they walked down the lane that winded back to the Royal Palace.

"I don't believe that there is any such thing as a happy ending." Margarry shrugged. "If the hero triumphs over one evil, another will inevitably arise, and he will have to fight it. If the heroine escapes death, she will still perish one day, even if that day is fifty years later. If the hero and the heroine get married, they will have arguments and rough patches in their relationship. Anyone who believes in happy endings doesn't understand that no story truly concludes until the hero and the heroine are dead, and no death is ever happy."

Owen couldn't argue with this as they stepped through the gates into the palace grounds. "Shall we take a stroll around the garden?" he suggested, feeling suddenly nervous as the time to propose to Margarry seemed to be rapidly approaching. "The ice sculptures are wonderful."

As Margarry nodded and permitted herself to be steered down a shoveled stone pathway lined with snowmen and ice statues, Owen gazed into her eyes so she could see that he was being nothing less than completely honest with her. Then, he said simply, "Ever since the first time I spoke with you in your father's kennels, I knew that you were special and that we shared some strange connection although we had only just met. I don't know when I fell in love with you. Maybe it was the first time I laid eyes on you. Perhaps it was the first time I had a conversation with you. Maybe it was the first time I read one of your letters. All I know is that I realized I was in love with you when the City of the gods was besieged, and I was haunted by the fear that you would die without knowing that I loved you. At the time, I imagined that I couldn't love you more, but my love for you hasn't stopped growing. Every laugh of yours, every smile you give me, every time you touch me, and every time I hear your voice, my love of you increases. By now, I've reached the point where I can't imagine life without you, and the idea of losing you is enough to make me feel sick. If every life is a story, Margarry, I want to merge mine with yours. I want us to fight the world together if we have to. I want us to cry together. I want us to whisper all our secrets to each other. I want us to comfort one another. I want us to laugh at the same jokes. I want us to eat at the same table and to live in the same castle. I want us to share everything and to grow old together."

Kneeling on the cold stones, Owen pulled the ring box out from under his cloak and opened it before lifting it up to Margarry as if it were an offering to the Goddess. "In short, I love you, and I wish to marry you. Will you accept my proposal?"

For a moment, she gaped down at him as though she didn't understand a word that had come out of his mouth, and Owen felt his heart turn to stone. Then, she beamed more radiantly than he had ever seen. "Well, since you asked so politely, I suppose that I could accept your offer, Owen of Jesslaw."

At her words, a crazy bliss flooded him. Abruptly, he wanted to scream his euphoria out to the whole country. Once he had done that, he would kiss the ground and hug everyone he met…

"Now, get up." Margarry's hands clamped about his wrists and yanked him to his feet. "I don't wish to have to listen to you complaining incessantly about knee damage in old age, and kneeling on cold, hard stone like that can't be good for your kneecaps."

"You should have told your father not to beat me up in training so much if you didn't want to hear about my aching body parts when I am bald," smirked Owen, sliding the ring about her finger.

"I don't need you to do that for me," she chided, knocking his hand aside. "I don't expect you to be some mythic hero who will magically do everything for me, or protect me from all harm and anxiety. I just want you to stumble through life beside me, so that we can have a lot of fun making mistakes together."

"I'd be a hero for you if I could," Owen informed her earnestly.

"And I'd be a heroine for you if I could, but I can't," answered Margarry, squeezing his fingers with her own. "We're both imperfect. Maybe it's best that way, since now we can be sure that we won't have a boring marriage."

Before he could respond, Margarry studied the golden ring and the gem affixed to it that were both glistening in the wintry sunlight, and murmured, "Merciful Mother, Owen, this ring is gorgeous."

"It's worthy of your splendor, then." Owen kissed her on the lips and then added in a subdued voice, "It was my mother's engagement ring."

"I'm honored you gave it to me, then," Margarry whispered, her eyes moistening. "In that case, it has a real history behind it. If we have a daughter together, perhaps we can pass it along to her as an heirloom."

"I'd like that." Even as tears obscured his vision at the thought his mother, the prospect of one day really having a chance to raise children with Margarry made him grin so broadly that he feared the smile would split his face in half. "Nothing would please me more than having a daughter as smart, as strong, as sarcastic, and as stubborn as you."

"That's funny, because I was just thinking about how much I would love to have a son as courageous, as determined, as noble, and as honest as you."

"Your father would be really pleased if we had a son like me," snickered Owen, envisioning the expression on Wyldon's face if the man discovered that he had a grandson as blunt and obstinate as Owen.

"He would." Margarry's palm stroked Owen's cheek. "Father appreciates how unique you are, and he'd want the traits that make you so special to be passed onto the next generation."

"I'm sure he would if we phrased it properly and told him to regard having a grandson like me as just another excellent opportunity to resist his innate urge to commit child abuse."

"I'm supposed to be the pessimist, silly, not you." Margarry nudged him in the ribs.

"Role reversal builds empathy in a relationship." Owen's eyes gleamed slyly. "Anyway, since I'm supposed to be the perpetual optimist, is it okay if I say that this feels like a happy ending?"

"It's okay that you say that if you don't mind being wrong," she replied. "This isn't a happy ending. It's an auspicious beginning."

"Hmm." Owen examined her pensively. "Maybe now would be a good time for me to mention that your father made me swear to wait at least three years before marrying you."

"Father really can't bear to let me go. No wonder he was so odd this morning. He knew you were going to propose. Watching your children grow up must be the only thing more painful than growing up yourself." Sighing, Margarry shook her head. "Oh, well, at least this way I have plenty of time to pick out a wedding dress that won't make my thighs look fatter than they actually are. I want our marriage ceremony to be perfect."

"Our marriage ceremony would be perfect even if you were walking down the aisle in rags," Owen reassured her, kissing her on the lips. With that, their conversation was replaced with locking lips, dancing tongues, and caressing fingers as one language of love overtook another.


End file.
